“Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.”
― George Orwell, 1984
As a society the USA is not the one with raging henophia or what is called now "systemic rasism". It is socierty ruled by
financil oiligarchy which considereverybody as thier slaves, independent ofthe colorof thier skin. This is a society which elected
Barak Obama and which demonstrated strong support for Tulsi Gabbard.
But cries about "systemic racism" are a nice destruction from the realities of the brutal rule of the financial oligarchy.
The term "neoliberal identity politics" can also be used in a neutral, non-pejorative
sense to encompass ‘feminism, black liberation, gay rights, minorities right, nationalism, etc …’
Prejudices are essentially heuristics. The stereotype people based on simple visual clues. Unlike people, multinationals,
especially transnational financial institutions, are color-blind. For them everybody is a slave.
Neolib DemoRats given up "class warfare" for "identity politics". A Blairite would say: "we wanted to be
a party of power" => money. Identity politics led to "unilateral representation of ethnic minorities",
that is a politic decision based on race.
Identity politics has been co-opted by the neoliberal technocracy to divert attention from wealth
inequalities, the dominance of big corporations and financial oligarchy in politics, and the complete lack of democratic accountability
of elected officials.
This is why African Americans voters which have been just as let down by neoliberal politics by
Bill Clinton and Obama voted overwhelmingly for Bill Clinton, Obama and Hillary Clinton. Such
a nice politico-technological trick did them in.
This election identity politics did not work all the time. One resent and spectacular failure was Presidential elections of 2016.
Neoliberal establishment candidate -- a staunch neocon and warmonger Hillary Clinton with all her identity
politics tricks lost the election to Donald Trump who positioned himself as an independent candidate not controlled by financial
oligarchy:
For the last thirty years, there has been no left or right wing governments - not economically
or fiscally. Third way centrism (liberal progressiveness) embraced the primacy of unfettered market
capitalism and corporate globalism, and focused exclusively on using political power as a tool
to win the culture war instead.
That's fine if you've done materially very well out of unfettered
market capitalism and corporate globalism, and all that therefore matters to you is social justice
issues.
But if you were once in a secure job with a decent income and decent prospects for your
children, and all of that has been ripped away from you by unfettered market capitalism and corporate
globalism, and the people responsible for preventing that - or at least fixing it when it happens
- are more concerned with policing the language you use to express your fears and pain, and demonstrating
their compassion by trying to improve the life chances of people on other continents, then social
justice issues become a source of burning resentment, not enlightenment.
There has been a crushing
rejection of globalism and corporate plutocracy by Western electorates. The Western progressive
left will only survive if it has the courage to recognise that, and prioritises the fight for
economic and fiscal policies that promote the interests and prospects of its own poor and middle
class, over and above the cultural issues that have defined it for a quarter of a century.
We
should always remain vigilant, but the truth is that the culture war is won. It would be tragic
beyond words if that victory was reversed by an explosion of resentment caused by the left's determination
to guard old battle fields, while ignoring the reality that its thinkers and activists are needed
to right new injustices. Trump's success doesn't represent the victory of hate over hope, it just
represents the loss of hope. The left has to see that or its finished.
The left pandered to the margins. It is more important for them to impose a transsexual using
a rest room with my daughter in school than it is to just keep the boys with boys and girls with
girls.
One example, but my point is that this kind of policy alienates and offends more people
than it seeks to serve. The dems let us down by pandering to the margins of our society along
with prioritizing all sorts of things that simply just don't matter to the rank and file American.
I agree. I think looking at this through the prism of race and gender is a massive red herring.
Race and gender bias are symptoms of insecurity, not causes of it. The insecurity in this case
is the feeling that the country - economically, politically and culturally - has been stolen by
elites who care naught about ordinary, less privileged folk.
On another thread I also mentioned another issue which is how fractured society has become
in the West, how disconnected its different parts, a process which technology has fuelled. You
can get through your life today without dealing in any significant way with anyone who disagrees
with you, which is actually very, very dangerous.
The working classes have been stripped of their dignity, whole communities have become wastelands
and virtual ghettos. The working class don't trust the left to sort things out for them and that
is why and how a figure like Trump can come along and say 'I will save you all' and become President.
Meanwhile, the socialist left sit around scratching their heads, unable to work out what has happened
and squabble about the spirit of socialism and ideology that in all honesty, most working class
people don't give a toss about. They just want jobs that pay a decent wage, a nice house to own,
nice food on the table, two cars and nice holidays. They want to be middle class in other words.
But democrats are not left. They right wing too. If Americans think that Democrats are left, they
don´t know what left is at all. And what socialist goverment has USA had. I see Americans saying
tthat Democrats are socialists, really?.Hillary left and socialist?. Trump and Hillary are both
right wing, only that Trump is more extreme.
Guardian columnists such as Hadley Freeman, Lucia Graves, Wolff, Abramson, Freedland and company
should be forced to read this article. These columnists very rarely if ever talk about the Gilded
Age style inequality levels in the West, and the USA in particular. Instead it is all about identity
politics for them. Can these individuals start writing about the disastrous chasm between the
very rich and the rest please?
Definitely. Identity politics has been coopted by the neoliberal technocracy to divert attention
from wealth inequalities, the operation of big corporations in politics and the general lack of
democratic accountability in governance.
As for Apple, let's start with the statement that most Apple product are overrated and
overpriced. Despite price, they are more of a fashion statement then technology marvels. Owning
Apple is a lot like using Chanel por Dolche and Gabbana perfume. This is a statement that you are
special.
Now by adopting "woke bolshevism" Apple will inevitably slide deeper into mediocrity.
I'm biased, because I know Antonio Garcia-Martinez and something like the same thing once
happened to me, but the decision by Apple to bend to a posse of internal complainers and
fire him
over a passage in a five-year-old book is ridiculous hypocrisy. Hypocrisy by the complainers,
and defamatory cowardice by the bosses -- about right for the Invasion of the Body Snatchers
-style era of timorous conformity and duncecap monoculture the woke mobs at these places are
trying to build as their new Jerusalem.
Garcia-Martinez is a brilliant, funny, multi-talented Cuban-American whose confessional
memoir Chaos Monkeys
is to big tech what Michael Lewis's Liar's Poker was to finance. A onetime high-level Facebook
executive -- he ran Facebook Ads -- Antonio's book shows the House of Zuckerberg to be a cult
full of on-the-spectrum zealots who talked like justice activists while possessing the business
ethics of Vlad the Impaler:
Facebook is full of true believers who really, really, really are not doing it for the
money, and really, really will not stop until every man, woman, and child on earth is staring
into a blue-framed window with a Facebook logo.
When I read Chaos Monkeys the first time I was annoyed, because this was Antonio's third
career at least -- he'd also worked at Goldman, Sachs -- and he tossed off a memorable
bestseller like it was nothing. Nearly all autobiographies fail because the genre requires
total honesty, and not only do few writers have the stomach for turning the razor on
themselves, most still have one eye on future job offers or circles of friends, and so keep the
bulk of their interesting thoughts sidelined -- you're usually reading a résumé,
not a book .
Chaos Monkeys is not that. Garcia-Martinez is an immediately relatable narrator because in
one breath he tells you exactly what he thinks of former colleagues ("A week before my last
day, I had lunch with the only senior person at Goldman Sachs who was not an inveterate
asshole") and in the next explains, but does not excuse, the psychic quirks that have him
chasing rings in some of the world's most rapacious corporations. "Whenever membership in some
exclusive club is up for grabs, I viciously fight to win it, even if only to reject membership
when offered," he wrote. "After all, echoing the eminent philosopher G. Marx: How good can a
club be if it's willing to have lowly me as a member?"
... ... ...
At one point, as a means of comparing the broad-shouldered British DIY expert favorably to
other women he'd known, he wrote this:
Most women in the Bay Area are soft and weak, cosseted and naive despite their claims of
worldliness, and generally full of shit. They have their self-regarding entitlement feminism,
and ceaselessly vaunt their independence, but the reality is, come the epidemic plague or
foreign invasion, they'd become precisely the sort of useless baggage you'd trade for a box
of shotgun shells or a jerry can of diesel.
Out of context, you could, I guess, read this as bloviating from a would-be macho man
beating his chest about how modern "entitlement feminism" would be unmasked as a chattering
fraud in a Mad Max scenario. In context, he's obviously not much of a shotgun-wielder himself
and is actually explaining why he fell for a strong woman, as the next passage reveals:
British Trader, on the other hand, was the sort of woman who would end up a useful ally in
that postapocalypse, doing whatever work -- be it carpentry, animal husbandry, or a shotgun
blast to someone's back -- required doing.
Again, this is not a passage about women working in tech. It's a throwaway line in a comedic
recount of a romance that juxtaposes the woman he loves with the inadequate set of all others,
a literary convention as old as writing itself. The only way to turn this into a commentary on
the ability of women to work in Silicon Valley is if you do what Twitter naturally does and
did, i.e. isolate the quote and surround it with mounds of James Damore references. More on
this in a moment.
After trying the writer's life, Antonio went back to work for Apple. When he entered the
change on his LinkedIn page, Business Insider did a short, uncontroversial
writeup . Then a little site called 9to5Mac picked up on
the story and did the kind of thing that passes for journalism these days, poring through
someone's life in search of objectionable passages and calling for immediate disappearance of
said person down a cultural salt mine. Writer Zac Hall quoted from Apple's Inclusion and
Diversity page:
Across Apple, we've strengthened our long-standing commitment to making our company more
inclusive and the world more just. Where every great idea can be heard. And everybody
belongs.
Hall then added, plaintively, "This isn't just PR speak for Apple. The company releases
annual
updates on its efforts to hire diversely, and it puts its money where its mouth is with
programs
intended to give voice to women and people of color in technology. So why is Apple giving
Garcia Martinez a great big pass?"
From there the usual press pile-on took place, with heroes at places like The Verge sticking
to the playbook. "Silicon Valley has consistently had a white, male workforce," they wrote,
apparently not bothered by Antonio's not-whiteness. "There are some in the Valley, such as
notorious ex-Googler James Damore, who suggest this is because women and people of color
lack the innate qualities needed to succeed in tech ."
Needless to say, Antonio never wrote anything like that, but the next step in the drama was
similarly predictable: a group letter by Apple employees claiming, in seriousness, to fear for
their safety. "Given Mr. García Martínez's history of publishing overtly racist
and sexist remarks," the letter read, "we are concerned that his presence at Apple will
contribute to an unsafe working environment for our colleagues who are at risk of public
harassment and private bullying." All of this without even a hint that there's ever been
anything like such a problem at any of his workplaces.
Within about a nanosecond, the same people at Apple who hired Antonio, clearly having read
his book, now fired him, issuing the following statement:
At Apple, we have always strived to create an inclusive, welcoming workplace where
everyone is respected and accepted. Behavior that demeans or discriminates against people for
who they are has no place here.
The Verge triumphantly reported on Apple's move using the
headline , "'Misogynistic' Apple hire is out hours after employees call for investigation."
Other companies followed suit with the same formulation. CNN : "Apple
parts ways with newly hired ex-Facebook employee after workers cite 'misogynistic' writing."
CNET : "Apple reportedly cuts ties with employee amid uproar over misogynistic
writing."
Apple by this point not only issued a statement declaring that Antonio's "behavior" was
demeaning and discriminatory, but by essentially endorsing the complaints of their
letter-writing employees, poured jet fuel on headline descriptions of him as a misogynist. It's
cowardly, defamatory, and probably renders him unhirable in the industry, but this is far from
the most absurd aspect of the story.
I'm a fan of Dr. Dre's music and have been since the N.W.A. days. It's not any of my
business if he wants to make $3 billion
selling Beats by Dre to Apple , earning himself a place on the board in the process. But if
2,000 Apple employees are going to insist that they feel literally unsafe working alongside a
man who wrote a love letter to a woman who towers over him in heels, I'd like to hear their
take on serving under, and massively profiting from, partnership with the author of such
classics as "Bitches Ain't Shit" and "Lyrical Gangbang," who is also the subject of such
articles
as "Here's What's Missing from Straight Outta Compton: Me and the Other Women Dr. Dre Beat
Up."
It's easy to get someone like Antonio Garcia Martinez fired. Going after a board member
who's reportedly
sitting on hundreds of millions in Apple stock is a different matter. A letter making such
a demand is likely to be returned to sender, and the writer of it will likely spend every
evaluation period looking over his or her shoulder. Why? Because going after Dre would mean
forcing the company to denounce one of its more profitable investments -- Beats and Beats Music
were big factors in helping Apple turn
music streaming into a major profit center . The firm made $4.1 billion in that
area last year alone.
Speaking of profits: selling iPhones is a pretty good business. It
made Apple $47.9 billion last year, good for 53% of the company's total revenue. Part of
what makes the iPhone such a delightfully profitable product is its low production cost, which
reportedly comes from Apple's use of a smorgasbord of suppliers with a penchant for forced
labor -- Uighurs said to be shipped in by the thousand to help make
iPhone glass (Apple denies this), temporary "dispatch workers" sent in above
legal limits , workers in "iPhone city"
clocking excessive overtime to meet launch dates, etc. Apple also has a storied history of
tax avoidance, offshoring over a hundred billion in revenues, using Ireland as a corporate
address despite no physical presence there, and so on.
Maybe the signatories to the Apple letter can have a Chaos Monkeys book-burning outside the
Chinese facility where iPhone glass is made -- keep those Uighur workers warm! Or they can have
one in Dublin, to celebrate the €13bn tax bill a court recently ruled Apple didn't have to pay.
It's all a sham. The would-be progressives denouncing Garcia-Martinez don't seem to mind
working for a company that a Democrat-led congressional committee ripped for using " monopoly
power " to extract rents via a host of atrocious anti-competitive practices. Whacking an
author is just a form of performative "activism" that doesn't hurt their bottom lines or their
careers.
Meanwhile, the bosses who give in to their demands are all too happy to look like they're
steeped in social concern, especially if they can con some virtue-signaling dink at a trade
website into saying Apple's mechanically platitudinous "Shared Values" page "isn't just PR
speak." You'd fire a couple of valuable employees to get that sort of P.R.
When I was caught up in my own cancelation episode, I was devastated, above all to see the
effect it had on my family. Unlike Garcia-Martinez, I had past writings genuinely worth being
embarrassed by, and I felt that it was important, morally and for my own mental health, to
apologize in public. I didn't fight for my career and reputation, and threw myself on the mercy
of the court of public opinion.
I now know this is a mistake. The people who launch campaigns like this don't believe in
concepts like redemption or growth. An apology is just another thing they'd like to get, like
the removal of competition for advancement. These people aren't idealists. They're just
ordinary greedy Americans trying to get ahead, using the tactics available to them, and it's
time to stop thinking of stories like this through any other lens.
nobaloney 4 hours ago
[neo]Liberal white women are the worst. The death of America.
Nicholi_Hel 2 hours ago remove link
The main thing that " is on it's way out" are all of your "smart" schizophrenic liberal
hags. They are fleeing the big cities (especially CA) in droves because their psychopathic
politics turned their states into crime ridden, dangerous ****holes with costs of living they
can no longer afford.
Unfortunately they are flooding into red states like Texas bringing with them stale
Marxism, tired feminism, couched slogans, sad cliches and of course their anti depressants
and genital herpes.
gregga777 4 hours ago
Au contraire, mon ami! Look at how wondrously successful they've made US corporations like
General Motors and The Boeing Company! /obviously sarcasm
SummerSausage PREMIUM 3 hours ago
Let's not forget the wonderous leadership of Carly Fiorina (HP), Elizabeth Holmes
(Theranos) and Marissa Mayer (Yahoo)
McGantic 4 hours ago (Edited)
I completely disagree.
I find liberal women of certain other races to be far more offensive.
Nothing is worse than loud, uncouth jogger women with their in-your-face screaming and
howling.
The definition of unsophisticated and to be avoided at all costs.
These liberal white women at least have some semblance of manners and intelligence.
espirit 3 hours ago
Just different tribes of howler monkeys...
rawhedgehog 4 hours ago
precisely the sort of useless baggage you'd trade for a box of shotgun shells
I think that covers about 90% of the surface population currently, not just Bay Area
fems.
Agent Smith 3 hours ago
Not sure how many you'd get in exchange for an obese whining vaccine damaged genetic
mutant. Maybe you could tout them as self propelled food?
Fool's Gold 3 hours ago
Made me laugh 😅
Notenoughtoys 4 hours ago
Matt Taibbi is brilliant - Wish all the ZH articles were as well written as this !
Seriously_confused 3 hours ago
Taibbi is half and half. He wants to tell the truth, but he wants to keep his woke friends
so he often whimps and whiffs. He can write, but he has his head up his behind in much of his
thinking. Every once in a while he comes up for air and writes something like this. The rest
is wankerific
rawhedgehog 4 hours ago (Edited)
The company releases annual updates on its
efforts to hire diversely
Yet where is their annual report on their use of slave labor in China and how that makes
for a more inclusive and bright world. **** THIS CULTURE OF MORONS AND THOUGHT PUPPETS!
Matt, I enjoyed this article of yours but you need to make more noise exposing how slavery
and the commoditization of human lives is the bedrock of modern tech.
"They're just ordinary greedy Americans trying to get ahead, using the tactics available
to them, and it's time to stop thinking of stories like these through any other lens."
That about sums it up.
Calculus99 3 hours ago
What a miserable place Apple must be to work in, always having to watch yourself for fear
of the mob (even if you're part of that mob).
The internal moral in these giant corps must be shot to pieces.
skippy dinner 2 hours ago
Lots of other corporations sell cool gear. There is no need to buy Apple stuff.
It's only because of conformist acquiescence to peer-group pressures that people buy
it.
The problem is the ahoLes who buy sht from that fing company - AppleFaceBookGoogle.
It is so easy to dump thEm - it is literally no effort.
Problems is there are a lot of people who dont care - about anything.
Nicholi_Hel 3 hours ago
I have no sympathy for the peter puffers that worked or work for Goldman Sachs, Facebook
and or Apple.
This pickle smoocher worked for all three, now we are supposed to break out the tissues
and violins because a group of vicious, screeching Bolsheviks ankle bit one of their own.
Actor and Grammy Award winning musician Donald Glover says that television shows and movies
are becoming increasingly boring because "people are afraid of getting cancelled."
ZeroHedge
The Who legend Roger Daltrey says the 'woke' generation is creating a miserable world that
serves to stifle the kind of creative freedom he enjoyed in the 60s.
The iconic frontman made the comments during a recent appearance on Zane Lowe's Apple Music
1 podcast.
"I don't know, we might get somewhere because it's becoming so absurd now with AI, all the
tricks it can do, and the woke generation," said Daltrey.
"It's terrifying, the miserable world they're going to create for themselves. I mean, anyone
who's lived a life and you see what they're doing, you just know that it's a route to nowhere,"
he added.
The singer noted how he was lucky to have lived through an era where freedom of speech was
encouraged, not silenced.
"Especially when you've lived through the periods of a life that we've had the privilege to.
I mean, we've had the golden era. There's no doubt about that," he said.
The phenomenon of "cancel culture" is a toxic one metastasizing into a woke revolution war
empowered by Big Tech and Big Business. Those unfamiliar with being canceled involve publicly
shaming others and boycotting celebrities and companies. However, the art of canceling has
progressed well beyond canceling public figures and is now used to garget average folks. The
result can be devastating for ordinary people who may face the consequences of losing their
jobs, losing friends and family, or having their social media accounts terminated.
Comedian Dave Chappelle partook in a video interview with Joe Rogan on "The Joe Rogan
Experience" podcast about cancel culture. He told Rogan that he recognizes the change people
are attempting to bring through activism and accountability for prominent folks but denounced
cancel culture:
"I'm very lucky to be able to see people who are great at things up close," Chappelle said.
"Even on this podcast ... it's one of the joys of my life getting to know these people and
knowing and seeing them be human."
Chappelle said, "I hope we all survive it," while referring to the cancel culture storm
gripping society. "That's why that cancel culture shit bothers me. I'm not even opposed to the
ideas behind some of these cancelations. I get it."
Rogan said, "the inclination, all of it, is to make the world a better place." He said
social media and public shaming have "gotten abused and misused by the wrong people and bad
actors, but at the end of the day, the thing they think they're trying to do is eliminate bad
aspects of our culture."
Last year, Chappelle criticized cancel culture, saying audiences have become "too brittle,"
adding that "everything you say upsets somebody."
Chappelle hasn't been the only well-known person to speak out against cancel culture, Curtis
Jackson, known as "50 Cent," recently said cancel culture is "
unfair " and "targeting straight men" who "don't have any organizations to back them
up."
Jackson said he wouldn't get canceled because "hip-hop culture loves things that are
damaged. It loves people who are already broken from experience."
A study by a top education think tank, Civitas,
found that free speech at the world's leading universities is being eroded at a rapid rate
due to "cancel culture."
Cancel culture may have had good intentions to hold people accountable for things they did
or say. Instead, it has backfired and produced a toxic environment that limits freedom of
speech and alienates anyone with opposing views. Society can't move forward if liberals cancel
anyone they don't like - there needs to be an open forum where all voices are heard.
The people tearing down statues and being "woke" at every little thing seem to wander
about and flop around in a state of perpetual confusion. They have no guiding principles or
the hand of righteousness to steady them. They are hollow ! Every waking hour of their lives
is consumed with all this nonsense.
They want to smash everything without really knowing why. They are happiest when all is
ruin and then look around in dismay at what they have done and what they will now have to
live with. This fills their emptiness because there is nothing else to do so. Folks like this
burn out either destroyed by others, frequently destroying themselves, first the soul, then
the body. What kind of a jackass torches his own neighbourhood, in effect shits in his soup
bowl ?
The woke and cancel culture do ! It must be fun for them but after the laughter comes
those tears.
An advanced society functions by creating a series of institutions, telling them what it
wants them to do, and funding them to do it. Institutions like the police, fire departments,
courts and schools do the jobs society creates them to do. But one American institution --
higher education -- has decided to repurpose itself. It has set aside the job given to it by
society and substituted a different one.
Higher education had a cluster of related purposes in society. Everyone benefited from the
new knowledge it developed and the well-informed, thoughtful citizenry it produced. Individual
students benefited from the preparation they received for careers in a developed economy. Yet
these days, academia has decided that its primary purpose is the promotion of a radical
political ideology, to which it gives the sunny label "social justice."
That's an enormous detour from the institutional mission granted to higher education by
society -- and a problem of grave consequence. For the purpose that academia has now given
itself happens to be the only one that the founding documents of virtually all colleges and
universities take care to forbid pre-emptively. The framers of those documents understood that
using the campuses to promote political ideologies would destroy their institutions, because
ideologies would always be rigid enough to prevent the exploration of new ideas and the free
exercise of thought. They knew that the two purposes -- academic and political -- aren't simply
different, but polar opposites. They can't coexist because the one erases the other.
The current political uniformity of college faculty illustrates the point. It meets the
needs of the substitute purpose very well, but only by annihilating the authorized one.
Analytical thinking requires exploring a range of alternatives, but political crusades require
the opposite: exclusive belief and commitment. That's how far off course academia has gone in
its capricious self-repurposing.
Though most Americans aren't happy about this, academia has no qualms. No matter how many
times the lack of intellectual diversity on politicized, one-party campuses is decried as
unhealthy and educationally ruinous, the campuses won't listen. There was once internal debate
about higher education's direction between traditional academic scholars and radical political
activists, but that debate is long over. The activists, now firmly in control, have no interest
in what the dwindling ranks of scholars have to say.
Menthol cigarettes are racist. Regular flavored cigarettes don't kill as many black people
as menthol cigarettes and will henceforth be canceled. Because black people will ever only
smoke menthol cigarettes and never smoke regular flavored cigarettes, right?
On menthol, African American health groups and researchers say it is clear that Blacks
have been disproportionately hurt by the cigarettes, which studies show are more addictive
and
harder to stop using than non-menthol cigarettes.
In the 1950s, only about 10 percent of Black smokers used menthol cigarettes. Today, that
proportion is more than 85 percent, three times the rate for White smokers . African
Americans die of tobacco-related illnesses, including cancer and heart disease, at higher
rates than other groups, according to studies.
I smoked 3 packs of cigarettes a day most of my adult life and I can tell you without
hesitation or qualification that anyone who believes canceling one kind of cigarettes will get
people to stop smoking should be fired for rank stupidity.
GodEmperor0fMankind 1 hour ago
He cant even get his son to stop smokin crack
ted41776 47 minutes ago
while naked in bed with underage relatives? allegedly
Hedgehog77 1 hour ago
But smoking meth and ****ting on the sidewalk is just fine.
onasip123 1 hour ago
When Menthol cigarettes are outlawed, only outlaws will have Menthol cigarettes.
dukeofthefoothills 1 hour ago
Biden: "If you smoke regular cigarettes, you're not Black, man."
Nature_Boy_Wooooo 1 hour ago
This is so awesome.
awake283 1 hour ago
When I smoked, I really only smoked menthols. Does that mean I was appropriating black
culture?
-- ALIEN -- 1 hour ago
Reparations need to be made!
Gentleman Bastard 1 hour ago
Looks like a black market opportunity for menthol cigarettes just opened up.
HRH of Aquitaine 2.0 1 hour ago
Yep great minds think alike.
Lord Raglan 39 minutes ago (Edited)
Oregon legalized cocaine but they've outlawed straws.
Must be frustrating.
There's classic liberal logic for you.
holmes 1 hour ago
Blacks like menthol cigs better. So these cigs are racist. So does that make fried chicken
racist also?
the6thBook PREMIUM 1 hour ago
Shouldn't blacks be upset that they are banning their cigarettes? Trying to make blacks
smoke white cigarettes?
cowdiddly 37 minutes ago
Well, Obama did warn you that this Dotard was dumb as a rock.
In our summer of discontent, of protests and then riots in what many view as a racial reckoning following the death of
George Floyd at the hands of police, we've seen previously radical ideas such as defunding the police become the norm.
Not only that, we've seen liberal institutions such as The New York Times bow before "woke" mobs and cancel all who don't
conform to the whims of the radical left.
And we've seen corporate America almost universally endorse Black Lives Matter, a radical organization with Marxist roots.
Two writers in particular have risen in popularity on the left, dominating national bestseller lists while gathering
increased media attention: Robin DiAngelo, a lecturer and author of "
White
Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
," and Ibram X. Kendi, director of the Center for
Antiracist Research at Boston University and author of "
How
to Be an Antiracist
."
Although their works are distinct, both writers promote an ideology they call "anti-racism."
These two authors are shaping the modern discussion over "wokeness" and the ideas that are becoming politically mainstream
in America, at least on the American left.
It's critical to have an understanding of what they believe.
For instance, why would a mob opposed to white supremacy attack statues of both a slaveholder and an abolitionist?
Is this an example of mindless, wanton destruction? Or perhaps the rioters are embracing a larger set of ideas that creates
a ruthless dichotomy between racists and anti-racists?
According to both DiAngelo and Kendi, there really are only two paths any person may take: racism or anti-racism. Being
"not racist," as Kendi writes, is not good enough, nor does it mean one isn't a racist.
DiAngelo defines "white fragility," the topic of her book, as a process whereby white people return to "our racial comfort,
and maintain our dominance within the racial hierarchy."
"Though white fragility is triggered by discomfort and anxiety, it is born of superiority and entitlement," DiAngelo
writes. "White fragility is not weakness per se. In fact, it is a powerful means of white racial control and the protection
of white advantage."
Essentially, if a white person is uncomfortable talking about race or denies his fundamental whiteness, as well as his
racism, he is guilty of white fragility.
In fact, according to the arguments of both DiAngelo and Kendi, even a denial of racism can be construed as evidence of
racism.
As several other writers,
including
Mark Hemingway at The Federalist
, have noted, this is what's called a Kafka trap, a rhetorical device "where the more
you deny something, the more it's proof of your guilt."
Kendi and DiAngelo argue that racism is not just an individual act of discrimination or prejudice toward a person or a
people based on their race.
Instead, racism is redefined as a collective condition leading to inequities in society.
Kendi argues that those whom many Americans see as actual racists are far less dangerous than the real threat of widespread
acceptance of color blindness. He writes:
The most threatening racist movement is not the alt right's unlikely drive for a White ethnostate but the regular
American's drive for a 'race-neutral' one. The construct of race neutrality actually feeds White nationalist victimhood
by positing the notion that any policy protecting or advancing non-white Americans toward equity is 'reverse
discrimination.'
Kendi decries "assimilationists" as being essentially as bad as "segregationists."
Kendi opposes the assimilationists, as he defines them, because he says they attribute behavior to the unequal outcomes for
different races.
In fact, even asking the question of why different groups of people have statistically differing outcomes in a society may
be construed as racist.
DiAngelo adopts Kendi's construction of racism, writing that "if we truly believe that all humans are equal, then disparity
in condition can only be the result of systemic discrimination."
The argument essentially is that any racial discrepancies in society are examples of racism.
So, if a society has a disproportionate number of rich white people compared to rich black people, that is racism. If one
race has a higher mortality rate from a disease than another, again the culprit is racism.
Kendi is, of course, highly selective in the statistics he cites to demonstrate that "there may be no more consequential
White privilege than life itself."
As Coleman Hughes
wrote
for City Journal
: "By selectively citing data that show blacks suffering more than whites, Kendi turns what should be a
unifying, race-neutral battle ground -- namely, humanity's fight against deadly diseases -- into another proxy battle in the War
on Racism."
Hughes, like Kendi, is black.
2. Colorblindness Is the Problem, and Racist
The concept of equal opportunity is fundamentally rejected by the doctrines of DiAngelo and Kendi. They argue that in a
deeply racist society conditioned to white supremacy, equal opportunity under the law perpetuates only more inequality.
Both DiAngelo and Kendi rebuke the idea of colorblindness in how we treat race. DiAngelo does so more in a cultural sense.
She argues that colorblindness is essentially a sign of white privilege, a manipulation of the message of Martin Luther
King Jr. to perpetuate more racism.
"Color-blind ideology makes it difficult for us to address these unconscious beliefs," DiAngelo writes. "While the idea of
color blindness may have started out as a well-intentioned strategy for interrupting racism, in practice it has served to
deny the reality of racism and thus hold it in place."
White people must build their racial "stamina," DiAngelo argues, to overcome their white fragility.
The way for white people to do this is by recognizing, embracing, and critically examining collective "white identity" as
an antidote to white fragility. DiAngelo writes that "as an insider," she can speak for the white experience, but that she
uses her white identity as a way to "challenge racism."
DiAngelo lays on white people the responsibility -- the burden, one might say -- of attacking and defeating racism and
"whiteness."
3. Racism Is Solved Through Discrimination
Kendi leans more strongly into creating laws that specifically promote anti-racism. To be effective, he says, they must be
discriminatory.
Discriminatory laws, Kendi argues, can be desirable and in fact necessary as a way to promote equity:
If discrimination is creating equity, then it is anti-racist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist.
Someone reproducing inequity through permanently assisting an overrepresented racial group into wealth and power is
entirely different than someone challenging that inequity by temporarily assisting an underrepresented racial group into
relative wealth and power until equity is reached. The only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist
discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.
As long as the discriminatory finger is on the button of "equity," however Kendi and the anti-racists define it, it is
good.
Christopher Caldwell, author of "
The
Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties
,"
wrote
for
National Review that Kendi rejects the notion -- stemming from many civil rights advocates -- "that everything will be well as
long as we treat people with equality, neutrality, and respect."
"It is illegitimate. It is a 'racist' obstruction," Caldwell added.
Kendi proposes an anti-racist amendment to the Constitution,
which
he wrote about
in a short piece in Politico. It's worth quoting in full:
To fix the original sin of racism, Americans should pass an anti-racist amendment to the U.S. Constitution that
enshrines two guiding anti-racist principals [sic]: Racial inequity is evidence of racist policy and the different
racial groups are equals.
The amendment would make unconstitutional racial inequity over a certain threshold, as well as racist ideas by public
officials (with 'racist ideas' and 'public official' clearly defined). It would establish and permanently fund the
Department of Anti-racism (DOA) comprised of formally trained experts on racism and no political appointees.
The DOA would be responsible for preclearing all local, state, and federal public policies to ensure they won't yield
racial inequity, monitor those policies, investigate private racist policies when racial inequity surfaces, and monitor
public officials for expressions of racist ideas. The DOA would be empowered with disciplinary tools to wield over and
against policymakers and public officials who do not voluntarily change their racist policy and ideas.
This proposal by Kendi effectively would end self-government and nullify the Bill of Rights. A cadre of intellectuals
ensconced in the Department of Anti-racism would have the power to decide who can and can't run for office, and which laws
can or can't be passed based on their interpretation of what is racist.
Again, racist being defined by Kendi as "one who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inaction or
expressing a racist idea."
Which policies fall under the rubric of being racist or anti-racist?
"Every policy in every institution in every community in every nation is producing or sustaining either racial inequity or
equity," Kendi writes.
For those who believe they can escape the ugly culture war implications of these ideas and focus on economic or fiscal
policies, it's worth noting that embracing socialism and fighting capitalism is a critical element in promoting
anti-racism.
Therefore, a supporter of lower capital gains taxes -- or even someone who isn't actively opposing lower capital gains
taxes -- may be barred from running for or serving in office by a team of unaccountable bureaucrats in a permanently funded
federal agency.
Gone is the very bedrock of the system created by the Founders, the Constitution that has bent the flawed but exceptional
American system toward liberty and justice.
"History Does Not Repeat Itself, But It Rhymes" -- Mark Twain (attributed). This is a naked
fight for political power using very questionable means.
Marxist ideology revolving around class and special role of "proletariat" as the oppressed
class which strives for liberation and overthow "oppressors" in order to build more a just
society, is more or less replaced by race. In woke movement, blacks are the new proletariat.
Corporations, especially those headquartered in Georgia, have come out against the
legislation signed by Governor Kemp. Republicans describe the bill as one that addresses
election integrity while Democrats call it a voter suppression law – "Jim Crow 2.0".
Coca-Cola and Delta were among
the first to make a point to virtue-signal after the governor signed the bill, only to be
exposed as taking part in the process and giving input into the legislation. Both were fine
with the law until the governor signed it and grievance activists did their thing. Coke soon
discovered that not all of its consumers think that companies should be making policy –
that 's the job of lawmakers- and now it is trying to clean up the mess it made for itself.
Churches have increasingly played a part in American politics and this is an escalation of
that trend. Evangelical churches have shown support for conservative and Republican candidates
while black churches get out the vote for Democrats. This threat of bringing a large-scale
boycott over state legislation is a hostile action against the corporation. It's political
theatre. Groups like Black Voters Matter, the New Georgia Project Action Fund (Stacey Abrams),
and the Georgia NAACP are pressuring companies to publicly voice their opposition and the
religious leaders are doing the bidding of these politically active groups.
When SB 241 and HB 531 were working through the legislative process, the groups put pressure
on Republican lawmakers and the governor to abandon the voting reform legislation. They also
demanded that donations to any lawmakers supporting the legislation be stopped. The Georgia
Chamber of Commerce tried to remain bipartisan while still voicing support for voting rights
but then caved and expressed "concern and opposition" to some provisions . At the time,
several large Georgia companies were targeted by activists, including Aflac, Coca-Cola,
Delta Airlines, Home Depot, Southern Company and UPS.
The Georgia Chamber of Commerce previously reiterated the importance of voting rights
without voicing opposition against any specific legislation. In a new statement to CNBC, the
Georgia Chamber said it has "expressed concern and opposition to provisions found in both HB
531 and SB 241 that restrict or diminish voter access" and "continues to engage in a
bipartisan manner with leaders of the General Assembly on bills that would impact voting
rights in our state."
Office Depot came out at the time and supported the Chamber's statement. The Election
Integrity Act of 2021, originally known as Georgia Senate Bill 202, is a Georgia law
overhauling elections in the state that was signed into effect by the governor and we know what
happened. Office Depot has not delivered for the activists as they demand so now the company
faces boycott drama. The
religious leaders are taking up where the activist groups left off.
African Methodist Episcopal Bishop Reginald Jackson said the company has remained "silent
and indifferent" to his efforts to rally opposition to the new state law pushed by
Republicans, as well as to similar efforts elsewhere.
" We just don't think we ought to let their indifference stand ," Jackson said.
The leader of all his denomination's churches in Georgia, Jackson had a meeting last week
with other Georgia-based executives to urge them to oppose the voting law, but said he's had
no contact with Home Depot, despite repeated efforts to reach the company.
Faith leaders at first were hesitant to jump into the boycott game. Now the political
atmosphere has changed and they are being vocal. Jackson focused on pressuring Coca-Cola first.
After that company went along to get along, before it realized its error, Jackson moved his
focus onto other companies.
"We believe that corporations have a corporate responsibility to their customers, who are
Black, white and brown, on the issue of voting ," Jackson said. "It doesn't make any sense at
all to keep giving dollars and buying products from people that do not support you."
He said faith leaders may call for boycotts of other companies in the future.
So, here we are with Home Depot in the spotlight. There are
four specific demands leveled at Home Depot in order to avoid further action from the
activists.
Rev. Lee May, the lead pastor of Transforming Faith Church, said the coalition is "fluid
in this boycott" but has four specifics requests of Home Depot: To speak out publicly and
specifically against SB 202; to speak out against any other restrictive voting provisions
under consideration in other states; to support federal legislation that expands voter access
and "also restricts the ability to suppress the vote;" and to support any efforts, including
investing in litigation, to stop SB 202 and other bills like it.
" Home Depot, we're calling on you. I'm speaking to you right now. We're ready to have a
conversation with you. You haven't been ready up to now, but our arms are wide open. We are
people of faith. People of grace, and we're ready to have this conversation, but we're very
clear those four things that we want to see accomplished ," May said.
The Rev. Timothy McDonald III, senior pastor of the First Iconium Baptist Church, warned
this was just the beginning.
"It's up to you whether or not, Home Depot, this boycott escalates to phase two, phase
three, phase four," McDonald said. "We're not on your property -- today. We're not blocking
your driveways -- today. We're not inside your store protesting -- today. This is just phase
one."
That sounds a lot like incitement, doesn't it? Governor Kemp is speaking out, he has had
enough. He held
a press conference to deliver his comments.
"First, the left came for baseball, and now they are coming for Georgia jobs," Kemp said,
referring to MLB's decision to move this year's All-Star Game from Atlanta over the new laws.
"This boycott of Home Depot – one of Georgia's largest employers – puts partisan
politics ahead of people's paychecks."
"The Georgians hardest hit by this destructive decision are the hourly workers just trying
to make ends meet during a global pandemic. I stand with Home Depot, and I stand with nearly
30,000 Georgians who work at the 90 Home Depot stores and 15 distribution centers across the
Peach State. I will not apologize for supporting both Georgia jobs and election integrity,"
he added.
"This insanity needs to stop. The people that are pushing this, that are profiting off of
it, like Stacey Abrams and others, are now trying to have it both ways," Kemp said. "There is
a political agenda here, and it all leads back to Washington, D.C."
The governor is right. The activists are in it to federalize elections, not to look out for
Georgians, who will lose jobs over these partisan actions. The law signed by Kemp increases
voting rights, it doesn't limit them .
Well, hello there. I don't know if you've noticed, but we live in a vastly different worl d
than the last
time I posted here . The social landscape, political, and, it seems, everyday life is
trending vastly different since 2020, Covid, and the national elections.
A huge part of survival, prepping, and Nomad Strategies is getting done what needs to be
done with minimal interference or notice from those around us . The more eyes on your project,
the more people that can foul up our plans, throw a wrench in the works, or, nowadays, ruin
your life.
Have a secret identity.
So, we turn to lesson number one from the great bastion of literature: comic books.
What does almost every comic character have? A secret identity. And why? So they are not
having to fight, protect their family, and hide from the public all the time. That is a mighty
wise course of action. Life is not a movie. There are rarely times to take a bold, public stand
that will put you or your people in danger.
It is a blessing to live in the time and place we do that enables us to engage in such
vociferous debate levels with no real consequences. That is not the norm throughout history,
and, as we can see, it is changing in front of our eyes. All one needs to do is look at the
world outside of the U.S. for current or very recent historical examples. Take a look at
where Selco comes from
or Belfast just a couple of decades ago. Look at many areas of the Middle East, Syria , or Asia for current
displays of enforcement.
You don't have to share your opinions with everyone.
Keeping a low profile as long as possible is a crucial OpSec practice .
Note: I am not saying you are not allowed to have opinions. But, I am a firm believer in
only discussing them with known associates in private. It is also easier to keep seeing the
other party as still human if you do it in person. *Othering is a nasty thing to do and nastier
to be on the receiving end of. Remembering that the other side is not the devil incarnate helps
to identify actual enemies easier. Instead of jumping at every boogyman brought to your
attention, save your energy for real, in your face threats.
*The term Othering describes the reductive action
of labeling and defining a person as a subaltern native, as someone who belongs to the socially
subordinate category of the Other.
Choose your battles wisely, or don't battle at all
Another reason for concentrating on the mission: it's a waste of your time. Leave the
arguing and name-calling to others. Arguing lessens your productivity and may alienate
potential allies that could assist you. (Except for those pesky Facebook posts you made,
calling their kind evil and stupid.) Choosing not to participate in arguments and debates shows
that you have mental toughness, compassion, discernment, and, most importantly,
self-control.
In case you aren't aware, those and your integrity are essential things to keep intact. Both
for our own well being and for cultivating good, successful relationships. Keep your ego
intact, and if you can exercise the self-control required to not argue points with others that
don't matter in the day-to-day.
You will be more peaceful.
Fewer distractions = more time to work on numero uno
We want to give ourselves as much time as possible to work on various aspects of ourselves
that need the work.
Distractions from this can be costly. It can be costly in terms of time wasted on a needless
post, and at its worst, it can literally cost you everything you have worked for and built
up.
Stop throwing chum to the internet sharks.
An important but often overlooked aspect of any successful underground work is the ability
to escape notice. Therefore escaping issues that will negatively impact your ability to move
forward will help you complete whatever the mission at hand is.
Rather than willingly compromising your future, stop engaging with the sharks. Instead of
spending time engaged in activities that are not beneficial, use your time wisely. Allocate the
majority of your time to doing the work. Use your downtime to recharge, find the good, relax,
and keep your eyes on the prize.
There may be a time in the near future where we must elevate to a more offensive posture.
But now is not that time. What we do now is an important step in keeping us more even-keeled
and ready. Don't volunteer yourself for the enemies list. There are already plenty of people
that will gladly put some of us there.
1 hour ago (Edited) remove link
"Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners."
-- George Carlin play_arrow
Patmos 17 minutes ago
Ahhhh... George Carlin.... Back when liberals were liberals, and not "woke" regressive
morons.
Banker415 PRO 1 hour ago (Edited) remove link
1. Get off Facebook
2. Delete your Instagram
3. Stop using douche apps like Snap and TikTok
4. Don't use WhatsApp--switch to Signal and Wickr
5. Migrate off of Google apps and Apple-related apps
6. Kill your Twitter
knopperz 1 hour ago remove link
Jack Dorsey is in cahoots with Signal.
He celebrated on Twitter when it went #1 after the Parler Ban.
Rather use Telegram.
Banker415 PRO 1 hour ago
I agree with you on Signal... but it's a short-term solution until better apps are
available. Telegram is ok but its subject to the same MITM attacks as the others.
Foe Jaws 1 hour ago
I have been using DuckDuckGo for a few years it is a fine replacement for Google.
AnonymousCitizen 58 minutes ago
You might want to look into the management team of DuckDuckGo. It may not be the search
engine you're looking for.
Onthebeach6 1 hour ago remove link
Sounds like the author is preparing to be a very quiet mouse and accept the coup d'etat
and the new illegitimate regime.
The new regime will consolidate quickly to eliminate any chance of organized resistance -
they may also try to make it impossible for states to secede.
Ted K. 6 minutes ago (Edited) remove link
So, is this where we're at? Now that we know 'political correctness' has grown up into
'cancel culture' with this takeover of the USA and Western society (because that's what it
is), we're simply reduced to understanding 'how to survive' in it?
For real? Really? REALLY?!?!
No fight at all? We're all just gonna lie down and show our bellies and accept this?
British comedy icon Rowan Atkinson has said online mob justice makes him "fear for the
future" and lashed out at the algorithmically generated outrage perpetuated by social media
platforms.
In a recent interview with the Radio Times magazine, Atkinson, 65, described online cancel
culture as the "digital equivalent of the medieval mob roaming the streets looking for
someone to burn," while detailing what he perceives as the increasing polarization of the
world and how it's exacerbated by online discourse.
Atkinson previously fell foul of the 'woke crowd' when he manned the battlements in the
culture war to champion the cause of free speech, and the right to offend and to criticise even
the most sacred cultural institutions.
"The problem we have online is that an algorithm decides what we want to see, which ends
up creating a simplistic, binary view of society," Atkinson said, adding that it's
important to be exposed to a "wide spectrum of opinion" in the modern world.
"It becomes a case of either you're with us or against us, and if you're against us, you
deserve to be 'canceled,'" he opined.
Atkinson's latest comments received plenty of support online, including from Australian MP
Tim Wilson, who described the remarks as a "hole in one!"
Others felt Atkinson's self-imposed exile from online life might preclude him from
commenting on it.
"I love Mr. Bean, but I feel he might've missed a few things. Or, more than a few,"wrote
one Twitter user.
The Mr. Bean and Johnny English actor described online life as "a sideshow in my
world," while also discussing in the interview his lengthy career in British comedy,
including playing his most widely acclaimed character.
Atkinson said he finds playing Mr. Bean "stressful and exhausting," given he alone
must generate the majority of laughs from the audience using a character who rarely speaks.
He also alluded to a possible return in the role of the only character he created that he
enjoyed playing: the iconic Blackadder. Atkinson wrote the show with Ben Elton and Richard
Curtis, and it featured such British comedy luminaries as Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie.
However, possibly in reference to his views on contemporary culture, he added that it would
be hard to recreate "the creative energy we all had in the 80s."
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
Slezzkolen 7 hours ago 5 Jan, 2021 07:42 AM
Imagine Mel Brooks creating his brilliant films in today's snowf1ake world.
TheFishh Slezzkolen 3 hours ago 5 Jan, 2021 11:17 AM
If Brooks tried to make movies today, we would never hear of him at all, ever. He'd be shut
down by the woke police squad before he even started.
Ice_Man Slezzkolen 6 hours ago 5 Jan, 2021 08:03 AM
imagine the torrents of offended people . lol think i want to watch blazing saddles now.
mongo like candy!
Chris Pratt made a name for himself getting chased by dinosaurs in the Jurassic World
franchise films, but the woke are now out to get him for allegedly having what they deem to be
the political and cultural beliefs of a caveman.
Pratt originally shot to fame as the lovable lug Andy Dwyer on the NBC sitcom Parks and
Recreation , and went on to movie stardom as the leading man in the Jurassic World ,
Guardians of the Galaxy and The Lego Movie franchises. Unfortunately, he is now
squarely in the cancel culture crosshairs of the woke Twitter mob for potentially being a
secret, homophobic, Trump supporter.
This Pratt incident began when TV writer Amy Berg posted pictures of the four famous Chrises
– Chris Evans, Chris Pine, Chris Hemsworth, and Chris Pratt, on Twitter and said " one
has to go ."
In response, the Guardian readers of the Galaxy
attacked Pratt – claiming the star's Instagram bio ' radiated homophobic White
Christian supremacist energy '.
Pratt's bio that sparked that comment reads, " I Love Jesus, My wife and family! Seahawks
fanatic, MMA junky! " The horror. The horror.
This Pratt episode is amusing because while he is known for dinosaur movies, it is the woke
who are acting out of their lizard brains, as the evidence of Pratt being homophobic and a
white Christian supremacist is well entirely non-existent.
Last year, after actress Ellen Page attacked Pratt on Twitter for being a member of an "
infamously " anti-LGBTQ church, Pratt
responded , " It has recently been suggested that I belong to a church which 'hates a
certain group of people' and is 'infamously anti –LGBTQ.' Nothing could be further from
the truth. I go to a church that opens their doors to absolutely everyone ."
Of course, just because an emotionalist buffoon like Page says something doesn't make it so,
as she famously once gave a hysterical
speech on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert decrying the homophobia
and racism in America that led to the " attack " on Jussie Smollett. A claim that has
not held up particularly
well .
The lack of evidence regarding Pratt's homophobia hasn't deterred the Twitter mob from
marking Pratt for termination though, which is ironic since Pratt's father-in-law is former
Republican Governor of California
Arnold Schwarzenegger .
The other thing that seems to have galled the tiny Torquemadases of Twitter are Pratt's
ambiguous political beliefs.
Even though Pratt has never declared his support for Trump, the maniacal mob assumes he does
because he also hasn't said if he supports Biden. Although Pratt's wife, Katherine
Schwarzenegger, has publicly stated she will be voting for Biden.
The cancel culture clan point to Pratt's not attending an upcoming Avengers fundraiser for
Biden, and that he was also once photographed by a paparazzo wearing a
Gadsden Flag t-shirt that said 'Don't Tread on Me', as iron-clad proof of the star's evil
political intentions, but this seems like a short cut to thinking.
He was also
blasted by woke activists for joking about voting, with humorless morons branding him
insensitive and tone deaf. All Pratt had done was make a light-hearted quip about voting for
his kids' movie Onward at the People's Choice Awards. According to the fun police on Twitter,
this election is "too important" for such frivolity.
Pratt's lone, unambiguous statement on politics, besides his contribution of $1,000 to
Obama's campaign in 2012, was in 2017 in Men's Journal where he
said , " I really feel there's common ground out there that's missed because we focus on
the things that separate us I don't feel represented by either side. " What a monster!
The biggest issue with all of this nonsense is that people are furious not because of
anything Pratt has said or done, but because he hasn't said or done anything. Pratt isn't going
to a Biden fundraiser or a Trump fundraiser or a Groot fundraiser or a Thanos fundraiser he
isn't going to any fundraisers at all!
The idea that the mental midget McCarthy-ites on woke Twitter want to cancel Pratt because
he said and did nothing is absurd to the point of madness.
Chris Pratt has graciously kept his politics private, unlike a host of other
approval-addicted actors who flaunt their " fashionable " beliefs for 15 more minutes of
fame. Pratt shouldn't be excoriated for imagined beliefs that people project onto him, he
should only be judged by what he does and what he says in life.
For example, judge Pratt on his further
response to Ellen Page's baseless anti-LGBTQ claim,
" My faith is important to me but no church defines me or my life, and I am not a
spokesman for any church or group of people. My values define who I am. We need less hate in
this world, not more. I am a man who believes that everyone is entitled to love who they want
free from the judgement of their fellow man ."
He then wrote, " Jesus said, 'I give you a new command, love one another.' This is what
guides me in my life. He is a God of Love, Acceptance and Forgiveness. Hate has no place in my
or this world. "
That statement speaks glorious volumes about the quality and worth of Chris Pratt as a human
being.
The recent unwarranted vilification of Pratt speaks volumes too, not about him, but about
the vapid, vacuous and venal villains partaking in it.
I've never been much of a fan of Pratt's acting but this whole Twitter Pratt attack has left
me admiring the man for his groundedness and humility.
The bottom line is Chris Pratt seems like a genuine and decent guy and his detractors seem
like vile and repugnant Twitter tyrants.
Like this story? Share it with a friend!
Peter Chamberlin 21 October, 2020 21 Oct, 2020 11:29 AM
Trump was brought to power in the last election to disrupt the politically correct culture,
advocated by the Democrats as "Democracy", when it is in actuality, a hidden form of
authoritarianism, where the people are subjected and controlled through applied peer pressure
on a national level. Neoliberal mainstream media has been at war with American culture since
the birth of the monster called "political correctness." The rage reaction against Trump has
been orchestrated from his first day in office, building in intensity until today, when we are
all called to be witness to the "crescendo" of the culture war. Democracy used to be when
everybody was entitled to their own opinions, as long as they did not force others to change
theirs. The arrival of so much partisan violence on both sides testifies to the abnormality of
our current situation and to the dangerous position we have allowed ourselves to be maneuvered
into. Whoever wins in two weeks, wins. Accept it and move forward.
intolerantslob 21 October, 2020 21 Oct, 2020 04:25 AM
Trump has tried to make peace - Biden is a war monger Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, etc. He
is a self-centered old man - why anyone thinks he would make a good president is beyond me. It
is time for the minor US parties, such as the Libertarians and Greens, to break the 2 party
domination of US politics
Flyingscotsman 20 October, 2020 20 Oct, 2020 11:56 AM
These woke keyboard warriors , should be held to account for slander or incitement to violence/
harassment. The fact they believe they can attack from the shadows and never be held to
account, is the problem .
T. Agee Kaye 21 October, 2020 21 Oct, 2020 06:25 AM
Why hedge with 'seems'? His attackers don't use 'seems'. Say it. Chris Pratt is decent guy and
his detractors are vile and repugnant Twitter tyrants.
Jenny Morrill writes the UK nostalgia blog World of Crap . Follow her here @ theworldofcrap Win or lose, the woke outrage mob are still
on the warpath. Everyone, everywhere, is in danger of being canceled for the injustice of the
week. In my opinion, the media are to blame for their childish good-versus-evil narrative.
Last week, I committed the ultimate unforgivable sin – I expressed mild support for
Donald Trump on Twitter. This was in the context of suggesting that the election, which even
the US Congress has admitted contains " the presence of extensive voter
fraud , " might have had some voting irregularities. This, obviously, translated into
me being a 'Nazi' and a 'far-right Trump enabler', whatever that's even supposed to mean.
It's a story we've heard many times before – someone fails to toe the far left's
ideological line, and they are immediately 'canceled'. It's happened to people far more
important than me, and as a result most 'normal' people just keep their mouths shut and stay
out of it. We're used to seeing the pitchforks coming after celebrities for their imagined
crimes (often the same celebrities who not five minutes ago were doing the exact same thing),
but be under no illusion that they save their venom for the rich and famous. I'm a nobody, and
still they were outraged enough to come after me.
For what it's worth, I don't consider myself right wing or left wing. For the most part, I
support things that benefit the average voter. Making sure elections aren't rigged is pretty
high on my list of 'things that benefit the average voter'.
Unfortunately, the generation who were rewarded with fake internet points for tweeting about
avocados and gender studies have decided that they are the new 'voice of the people', and the
rest of us can go to hell for not already agreeing with their deeply held beliefs they've had
since Tuesday. These people cry over the plight of the 'working class', but as soon as one of
them has an opinion they don't like, they are told to shut up and know their place. And god
forbid one of them should ever meet a working-class person in the wild – they will
wrinkle their nose and tell them off for 'liking football and sausage rolls'. These are the
people who refuse to acknowledge that most voters are not in favor of banning speech and
defunding the police, because they are stupid ideas.
You can spot these people immediately if you know the signs. Their Twitter username includes
a barked virtue signal, all in caps (John 'WEAR A MASK!' Jackson). They are the men who wear
T-shirts that say " The future is female ," and make sure the world sees them wearing
it. They have an open-mouthed selfie of themselves holding a Funko. It's always Funkos.
The problem with these people is that they get the moral prism through which they view the
world from Harry Potter, the Marvel movies, and other franchises aimed at children, rather than
the nuances of real life. They are infantilized by the corporate blanketing of the 'good v
evil, and by the way we're the good guys, buy our stuff' narrative. Being surrounded on all
sides by this simplistic world view inevitably reduces a person's ability to think critically,
especially when the punishment for doing so is being ostracized by your peers. It must be
difficult being a revolutionary when you're surrounded by every corporation on the planet
patting you on the back and charging you for the privilege.
And yet I can't really blame these people. The finger should be pointed at the media for
encouraging this one-sided view of the world to the point where all opposing views are banned,
no matter how harmless. The people who over-consume this media have lost whatever ability they
had to fairly judge a situation which might include various shades of grey. That's why they
react so furiously to someone disagreeing with them, to the point that they will make personal
threats.
Which brings me back to my deplorable crime of suggesting Trump might not be literally evil
incarnate. I don't mind losing some Twitter followers for what I said, but I do mind people
threatening to 'find out where I live and pay me a visit', people trying to get my (completely unrelated) blog shut down, and
generally trying to make my life a misery in all my online spaces. Perhaps most shockingly,
they threatened to get my Redbubble page shut down. I hope they don't do that, because I'd lose
a whole 30p a month.
I fully expect to get canceled even further after writing this. But quite frankly I'm past
caring. I just wanted to write about old TV. I just wanted to laugh at kids' shows from the
'80s, and talk about nostalgia. But the woke mob has a way of dragging you into its demented
world. Well, I don't want to be part of that world, and at some point they're going to have to
grow up and stop trying to be king of the playground. It's time to take social media back from
these oversized children.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
Franc shadow1369 2 hours ago 16 Nov, 2020 12:25 PM
It's even worse than intolerance and bigotry, it's intolerance and bigotry under the guise of
acceptance and goodwill. They've been indoctrinated, and if they were more organized we could
call them a legit religious cult.
volch 1 hour ago 16 Nov, 2020 01:49 PM
One of the best op-eds written. In my view people need to pay more attention to the social
biologists. Humans will accept their own irationality delusion and hysteria if they feel
their social standing is nevertheless enhanced . It's a fundamental problem that will plague
society forever. The woke mobs won't begin to question themselves while their dopamine levels
are elevated.
Sapphire1 1 hour ago 16 Nov, 2020 01:50 PM
My son lives in the States and he said that Woke culture has taken over. People were afraid
to say that they voted for Trump. The media has been taken over by the left and will not
report anything that goes against leftist propoganda. It is the end of free speech.
Lacus_Magnus DoubleKnot 2 hours ago 16 Nov, 2020 12:42 PM
(((They))) control what we hear, see and now (((they))) try to manage what we may say.
Remember the Koni experiment about 15 years ago? Within a week of social media campaigning
they had the kids up in arms over some obscure warlord in Africa. That was an excercise in
mob creation and manipulation.
benalls 58 minutes ago 16 Nov, 2020 02:04 PM
All living things are skeptical of that which is different from yourself. Government forced
tolerance, and mandatory race ratios has made the parents of this generation,angry, bitter,
and feeling unable to change things. This generation has by a majority been raised by a
single parent, at the border of poverty. The families wondering if there is enough left on
the maxed visa card to get enough gas to go to work and back today. They also find that after
they graduate high-school the choices are limited, lowering the bar to prevent accusations of
racism, their 4th grade reading and comprehension level disqualifies them for most of the few
jobs available
allan Kaplan 2 hours ago 16 Nov, 2020 12:47 PM
"Emperor's has new clothes" is so befitting to the real peeled off layer of an onion
Democrats and the fraudulent liberals that there's no more pretense, charades, and pretexts
left to dwell upon in their long run of fakeries of democracy, equal rights, and the rest of
the garbage! Kamala Harris is the living devil in disguise with all the subtle nuances, and
an unashamed sanctimonious holier-than-thou devil who would surpass any female leader of any
country in the past in her devilish turpitudes and depravity that the world has seen!
This is the really scary part. There used to be an unspoken rule that defense attorneys were
not supposed to be judged for their clients, even if they represent a despicable person. Serial
killers, terrorists, pederasts, etc. should not be cut off from the ability to have
representation in court.
A good law firm would be suing the Lincoln Project for harassment and defamation instead of
rolling over and showing their bellies to a bully. So it would seem that the loss of Porter
Wright as a member of the Trump team is probably for the best.
A law firm representing the Trump campaign's efforts to challenge the Pennsylvania election
results gave notice late Thursday that they are withdrawing from one of the cases.
While no reason was given for the decision by Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP,
Bloomberg notes that it was one of two law firms targeted by the Lincoln Project - a group
of 'never-Trump' Republicans devoted to removing Trump from office.
On Tuesday, the group encouraged people to join LinkedIn and target individual employees of
Porter Wright and another law firm, Jones Day, and "Ask them how they can work for an
organization trying to overturn the will of the American people."
" Leftist mobs descended upon some of the lawyers representing the President's campaign and
they buckled ," said campaign communications director, Tim Murtaugh. "If the target were anyone
but Donald Trump, the media would be screaming about injustice and the fundamental right to
legal representation. The President's team is undeterred and will move forward with rock-solid
attorneys to ensure free and fair elections for all Americans."
Here's another 'cancel' crusader bragging about the left's latest scalp:
Another attorney who is not affiliated with Porter Wright will remain on the case in
Williamsport, Pennsylvania. A hearing on the state's motion to dismiss the suit in federal
court is scheduled for Tuesday.
The suit claims the state's election results are suspect because the campaign wasn't given
adequate access to observe the vote-counting in Democratic-leaning counties. A hearing in
that case has been scheduled for Nov. 17.
Porter Wright has also been representing the campaign in a case heading to the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court similarly challenging vote tallies based on poll observers' access
to the counting process. It additionally filed several county-level challenges seeking to
disqualify ballots it claimed were defective. It's unclear if Porter Wright also intends to
withdraw from those representations. -
Bloomberg
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The firm's work for the Trump campaign was led by Pittsburgh office partner Ronald Hicks,
co-chair of their election law practice.
takeaction , 1 day ago
This is Soros/Clinton money and strong arming that is doing this.
We are in a full MAFIA exposure.
This is going to get real interesting.
I have said it before, this is the FIGHT OF THE REPUBLIC....if Trump ends up losing, all
hopes of exposure are gone.
Obama spying on Trump, No big deal...
Hunter corruption buried...
Clinton crime family, off the hook...
Seal Team 6...forgotten...
Biden family enrichment, no repercussions...
SETH RICH, a hero, wiped from memory...
There is a lot more at play here than just the "Election" and our taxes going up.
NAV , 1 day ago
Good riddance to Jones Day: this is just an excuse to further delay and hurt Trump's case.
Already that firm has leaked private case information to the New York Times. Both these firms
have sabotaged President Trump.
Jones Day, the most prominent firm representing President Trump and the Republican Party
in its legal battle challenging the results of the election, earlier backstabbed Trump in the
back by leaking case information to the New York Times.
The activist rag, the Times, says those inside the firm are concerned about the propriety
and wisdom of working for Trump.
Trump needed to fire these unethical lawyers and one wonders why he didn't. Maybe he's
being sabatoged on so many fronts he doesn't know where to start. And just maybe information
is being kept from him by his "advisers."
The Times says these Jones Day subversives fear "Mr. Trump and his allies undermine the
integrity of American elections, according to interviews with nine partners and associates,
who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their jobs."
(Notice that Trump always is Mr.Trump, not President Trump, while Biden is President-elect
Biden.)
"At another large firm, Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, based in Columbus, Ohio,
lawyers have held internal meetings to voice similar concerns about their firm's
election-related work for Mr. Trump and the Republican Party, according to people at the firm
. At least one lawyer quit in protest."
Trump has had 4 years to take action. I used to think like you but gave up about ...
hmmm... 4 years ago. He is just as zionist as ziohedge and the dems. Elections are
irrelevant. The CHAOS was always the plan.
takeaction is absolutely right in both comments. Great info in the first comment and a
great point in the second. We have one life, if you're not enjoying it, what's the point?
TheReplacement's Replacement , 1 day ago
Ah, a fundamental point of propaganda from the progressives that has successfully been
anchored in the psyche of the west. You need to have fun...
Life is a struggle that everyone will eventually lose. How rewarding the struggle is
depends of the effort you expend.
There are protests all across the country today. You can put down your childish things for
a few hours and go out to physically show support for Trump and the rule of law. You can meet
like minded people, network with them, and perhaps even begin preparing for struggles
ahead.
Or
Just keep doing what you have been doing. It has worked out sofa king great that the
communists are in their final push to take over not just this country but the entire
world.
It's up to you. No big deal. Have fun....
U_Wish_U_Were_This_Cool , 1 day ago
I suppose you have one?
Mine was to pass a constitutional amendment to forbid members of Congress from having any
income producing assets or source of income other that salary of office. Simply owning one
would by law immediately end their current term and disqualify them from any public office
from that point forward. No more corporate grift or self serving representatives in
office.
Of course it is difficult to convince a troll to support anything other than being a
troll.
Soylent Green tastes the same no matter which side of the fence you are on.
konputa , 1 day ago
If I may add an item to your excellent proposal:
Immediately ban anyone from public office that holds a foreign citizenship. I know this
will "unfairly" impact a number of people with dual citizenship in a certain ME country but I
feel it's for the better and allows us to focus on more pressing domestic issues.
kharrast , 1 day ago
The Troskyists are supported by the banking cartel. You can't get rid of the tyrants while
still using their monetary system.
wizteknet , 1 day ago
The committee was announced on December 17, 2019, in a New York Times op-ed by George
Conway, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver, and Rick Wilson.[5] Other co-founders include Jennifer
Horn, Ron Steslow, Reed Galen, and Mike Madrid.[6]. Sounds like a bunch McStains from what I
read.
MoreFreedom , 1 day ago
Big Democrat and RINO money is going up against Trump, and threatening the law firm
they'll lose their business with the traitors who bring in lots of revenue. That's what's
happening, and you are right; they are strong arming threats of force as well. It shows how
bad their case is they have to resort to thuggery and economic boycotts.
Cognitive Dissonance , 1 day ago
The Deep State/CIA's color revolution/coup proceeding as planned.
Hey Assholes , 1 day ago
Methinks that the obviousness of the fraud was intentional. Media crowns bidet, Trump
calling out the fraud. Whoever wins, the country is split and irreconcilable .
If Trump prevals, riots ensue and marshal law follows. We lose. If bidet steal succeeds,
70+ million become ungovernable, and civil war ensues.
I am a Tump supporter, but I am also an individualist and despise tyranny. The controllers
are trying to overturn the chess board and the setup is heads they win, tails we lose.
skizex , 1 day ago
Chairman of the Federal Election Commission says 'I Do Believe There Is
Voter Fraud Taking Place'...'Making This An Illegitimate Election' https://rense.com/general96/voter-fraud.mp4
Tirion , 1 day ago
All sorts of criminality has been obvious since the last election, but what has been done
about it? Nothing! So what makes you think they will lose? The rule of law is a pretense
only.
palmereldritch , 1 day ago
The CIA, at the highest level, is a Bankster infiltration and enforcement agency.
Goldblatz' Monster , 1 day ago
The bigger question is who in Hell wants more Trump (Kushner and Bibi)? Doesn't matter.
Bibi and Gates won. Harris stands before AIPAC spreading her love to Israel. The goy ain't
never gonna get it.
skizex , 1 day ago
Academy Award-winning actor Jon Voight has come out in support of Donald Trump's claim
that Joe Biden is falsely declaring victory in last week's presidential election.
"My fellow Americans, I stand here with all the feel as I do disgusted with this lie that
Biden has been chosen." Voight began. "As if we all don't know the truth. And when one tries
to deceive we know that one can't get away with it, there will be a price to pay."
Voight warned Americans that they are now facing their "greatest fight since the civil
war" as the left are Satanists:
The ones who are jumping for joy now are jumping towards the horror they will be in for.
Because I know that the promises being made from the left to the American people will never
come to be. My friends of all colors, races, and religions, this is now our greatest fight
since the Civil War. The battle of righteousness versus Satan. Yes, Satan. Because these
leftists are evil, corrupt, and they want to tear down this nation.
This is the really scary part. There used to be an unspoken rule that defense attorneys
were not supposed to be judged for their clients, even if they represent a despicable person.
Serial killers, terrorists, pederasts, etc. should not be cut off from the ability to have
representation in court.
But in this new Lord of the Flies zeitgeist, if you get designated as an enemy of the
state, they can bring you up on whatever charges they want and no defense attorney will risk
being associated with you. So you'll stand alone against the full weight of the
government.
StuffyourVAXX , 1 day ago
So wait, this was done on Twitter and LinkedIn?
Organizing coordinated harassment and threats aren't against their TOS? Huh.
Zorch , 1 day ago
Not against TOS because these are patriotic Americans fighting a fascist dictator.
/sarc
InTheLandOfTheBlind , 1 day ago
Conservatives, most Republicans, and most importantly, Christians, are considered subhuman
by Twitter. They have no rights
TechnoCaveman , 1 day ago
I feel for the law firm and its employees.
This happened for two reasons - lack of morals from those who harassed the firm and a lack of
push back from US
Not only should the police get involved, but can we know the names and companies of who did
the harassing so we can abandon them?
No violence - do not stoop to their level. Instead tell them they are on the wrong side of
justice and the wrong side of history.
Seek the truth.
Stand with Trump
Stand with Trump supporters.
Stand against evil.
rlouis , 1 day ago
A lot of the people on the Lincoln Project have links to John McCain...
Silentwistle , 1 day ago
Everyone is missing the big tell here. You don't send your mob out to harass if there is
nothing to hide. All they are doing is circling their wagons around this corruption
Quia Possum , 1 day ago
And it looks like they're succeeding in that effort. From the old John Harrington
verse:
Do not harass or bully: We don't allow bullying or harassment. This includes abusive
language, revealing others' personal or sensitive information (aka "doxing"), or inciting
or engaging others to do any of the same.
So everyone involved in the Lincoln Project should be banned from LinkedIn.
I'm sure Microsoft will get right on that.
Original_Intent , 1 day ago
and they call us Fascists - straight out of Saul Alinsky's book...
tunEphsh , 1 day ago
If the election had been run honestly, the Democrats and their Lincoln Project "friends"
would not be pushing so hard to end an investigation. Honest people would say "Go ahead and
investigate all you want to, you are not going to find anything."
Whoa Dammit , 1 day ago
A good law firm would be suing the Lincoln Project for harassment and defamation instead
of rolling over and showing their bellies to a bully. So it would seem that the loss of
Porter Wright as a member of the Trump team is probably for the best.
Totally_Disillusioned , 1 day ago
Unfortunately the corporatists have a tremendous amount of power.
Whoa Dammit , 1 day ago
Only if the power is given to them by not standing up for one's self and for the law. The
British had a lot of power here 244 years ago.
el_buffer , 1 day ago
Using intimidation and violence to foment political change is terrorism by definition.
I know you guys hate Facebook, so feel free to let your freak flag fly on that note.
Anyway, I commented on a Sun Times article on FB stating that the only qualifications for
Kamala were ticking the boxes of gender and race. She won zero delegates in the primaries,
and I don't know anyone who can even stand to hear her voice, let alone the words she is
forming with it. So a guy took a screenshot of my comment, proceeded to visit my personal
page, and messaged my employer saying that I am a racist, have no business representing the
company, and need to be fired immediately. As the page administrator I laughed at how
pathetic the guy was and deleted it. These people are out there in full force.
Countrybunkererd , 1 day ago
Every action you do will be under the cover of darkness and secrecy. Every day. Every
hour. Every minute. Every word carefully weighed as to ensure you don't say anything with
emotion or conviction. You don't speak to anyone about your thoughts or feelings because they
may use you to get out of some trouble where they were simply misunderstood by the given
power hungry individual for the current day. You never know what day you will be in trouble
for some misunderstood statement or worse.
You will give to the government everything they want and keep what they deem is enough to
sustain your meager lifestyle.
You can't afford to make a SINGLE mistake. Ever. So you cease talking with others except
for a very very select few.
EVERY SINGLE DAY. The lockdowns were a walk on the beach if and when we go this path.
Enjoy the Bolshevism, If you don't stand now on constitutional law, you deserve it. You
leftists have been played and are soon going to be deemed a useful idiot and executed by your
masters. It happens every single time, don't you read?
"... "There's no denying," Columbia professor Mark Lilla wrote in 2017's The Once and Future Liberal, "that the movement's decision to use this mistreatment to build a general indictment of American society and its law-enforcement institutions and to use Mau Mau tactics to put down dissent and demand a confession of sins and public penitence played into the hands of the Republican right." ..."
Early in the Trump years, moderate columnists and strategists held that the mechanisms for
accomplishing what Biden evidently has would be an aggressive critique of progressive identity
politics. It was agreed specifically that Black Lives Matter and progressive activism on
policing and criminal justice could be crippling.
"There's no denying," Columbia professor Mark Lilla wrote in 2017's The Once and Future Liberal, "that the movement's decision to use
this mistreatment to build a general indictment of American society and its law-enforcement
institutions and to use Mau Mau tactics to put down dissent and demand a confession of sins and
public penitence played into the hands of the Republican right."
Despite Democratic victories in 2018's midterms, the argument lived on long enough to worry
moderates who criticized Biden this year in the wake of the demonstrations and riots over the
killing of George Floyd and the shooting of Jacob Blake. "In the crude terms of a presidential
campaign, voters know that the Democrat means it when he denounces police brutality, but less
so when he denounces riots," The Atlantic 's George Packer wrote in a
piece about the unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
"To reach the public and convince it otherwise,
Biden has to go beyond boilerplate and make it personal, memorable."
A little over two months
later, it's actually quite difficult to remember what exactly Biden said that week. And he
never delivered grand denunciations of cancel culture, White Fragility, the 1619
Project, or any of the other culture war material moderates and conservatives suggested he
needed to address to make large gains among whites and white men in particular. Those gains
were clearly made anyway.
"... The hatred of Donald Trump, which certainly to some extent is legitimate if only due to his ignorance and boorishness, has driven a feeding frenzy by the moderate-to liberal media which has made them blind to their own faults. ..."
"... Just as the Israel Firsters in Congress and in the state legislative bodies have had great success in criminalizing any criticism of the Jewish state, the mainstream media's "fake news" in support of the "woke" crowd agenda has already succeeded in forcing out many alternative voices in the public space. ..."
"... This type of "thought control" has been most evident in the media, but it is beginning to dominate in other areas where conversations about policy and rights take place. Universities in particular, which once were bastions of free speech and free thought, are now defining what is acceptable language and behavior even when the alleged perpetrators are neither threatening or abusive. ..."
"... Recently, a student editor at the University of Wisconsin student newspaper was fired because he dared to write a column that objected to the current anti-police consensus. ..."
"... The worst aspect of the increasing thought control taking place in America's public space is that it is not only not over, it is increasing. To be sure, to a certain extent the upcoming election is a driver of the process as left and right increasingly man the barricades to support their respective viewpoints. If that were all, it might be considered politics as usual, but unfortunately the process is going well beyond that point. The righteousness exuded by the social justice warriors has apparently given them the mandate to attempt to control what Americans are allowed to think or say while also at the same time upending the common values that have made the country functional. It is a revolution of sorts, and those who object most strongly could well be the first to go to the guillotine. ..."
Once upon a time it was possible to rely on much of the mainstream media to report on
developments more or less objectively, relegating opinion pieces to the editorial page. But
that was a long time ago. I remember moving to Washington back in 1976 after many years of
New York Times and International Herald Tribune readership, when both those
papers still possessed editorial integrity. My first experience of the Washington Post
had my head spinning, wondering how front-page stories that allegedly reported the "news" could
sink to the level of including editorialized comments from start to finish to place the story
in context.
Today, Washington Post style reporting has become the norm and the New York
Times , if anything, might possibly be the worst exponent of news that is actually largely
unsubstantiated or at best "anonymous" opinion. In the past few weeks, stories about the
often-violent social unrest that continues in numerous states have virtually disappeared from
sight because the mainstream media has its version of reality, that the demonstrations are
legitimate protest that seek to correct "systemic racism." Likewise, counter-demonstrators are
reflexively described as "white supremacists" so they can be dismissed as unreformable racists.
Videos of rampaging mobs looting, burning and destroying while also beating and even killed
innocent citizens who are trying to protect themselves and their property are not shown or
written about to any real extent because such actions are being carried out by the groups that
the mainstream media and its political enablers favor.
The hatred of Donald Trump, which certainly to some extent is legitimate if only due to his
ignorance and boorishness, has driven a feeding frenzy by the moderate-to liberal media which
has made them blind to their own faults. The recent expose by the New
York Times on Donald Trump's taxes might well be considered a new low, with blaring
headlines declaring that the president is a tax avoider. It was a theme rapidly picked up and
promoted by much of the remainder of the television and print media as well as "public radio"
stations like NPR.
But wait a minute. Trump Inc. is a multi-faceted business that includes a great number of
smaller entities, not all of which involve real estate per se. Donald Trump, not surprisingly,
does not do his own taxes and instead employs teams of accountants and lawyers to do the work
for him. They take advantage of every break possible to reduce the taxes paid. Why are there
tax breaks for businesses that individual Americans do not enjoy? Because congress approved
legislation to make it so. So who is to blame if Donald Trump only paid $750 in tax? Congress,
but the media coverage of the issue deliberately made it look like Trump is a tax cheater.
And then there is the question how the Times got the tax returns in the first place. Tax
returns are legally protected confidential documents and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is
obligated to maintain privacy regarding them. Some of the files are currently part of an IRS
audit and it just might be that the auditors are the source of the completely illegal leak, but
we may never know as the Times is piously declaring "We are not making the records
themselves public, because we do not want to jeopardize our sources, who have taken enormous
personal risks to help inform the public." Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation
wryly observes that when it comes to avoiding taxes "I'll bet that the members of the
Times ' editorial board and its big team of reporters and columnists do the same thing.
They are just upset that they don't do it as well as Trump."
Just as the Israel Firsters in Congress and in the state legislative bodies have had great
success in criminalizing any criticism of the Jewish state, the mainstream media's "fake news"
in support of the "woke" crowd agenda has already succeeded in forcing out many alternative
voices in the public space. The Times has been a leader in bringing about this departure
from "freedom of speech" enshrined in a "free press," having recently forced
the resignation of senior editor James Bennet over the publication of an op-ed written by
Senator Tom Cotton. Cotton's views are certainly not to everyone's taste, but he provided a
reasonable account of how and when federal troops have been used in the past to repress civil
unrest, together with a suggestion that they might play that same role in the current
context.
This type of "thought control" has been most evident in the media, but it is beginning to
dominate in other areas where conversations about policy and rights take place. Universities in
particular, which once were bastions of free speech and free thought, are now defining what is
acceptable language and behavior even when the alleged perpetrators are neither threatening or
abusive.
Recently, a student editor at the University of Wisconsin student newspaper was fired
because he dared to write a column that objected to the current anti-police consensus.
Washington lawyer Jonathan Turley
observes how the case was not unique, how there has been " a crackdown on some campuses
against conservative columnists and newspapers, including the firing of a
conservative student columnist at Syracuse , the public condemnation of a
student columnist at Georgetown , and a
campaign against one of the oldest conservative student newspapers in the country at
Dartmouth. Now, The Badger Herald , a
student newspaper at the University of Wisconsin Madison, has dismissed columnist Tripp Grebe
after he wrote a column opposing the defunding of police departments." Ironically, Grebe
acknowledged in his op-ed that there is considerable police-initiated brutality and also
justified the emergence of black lives matter, but it was not enough to save him.
The worst aspect of the increasing thought control taking place in America's public space is
that it is not only not over, it is increasing. To be sure, to a certain extent the upcoming
election is a driver of the process as left and right increasingly man the barricades to
support their respective viewpoints. If that were all, it might be considered politics as
usual, but unfortunately the process is going well beyond that point. The righteousness exuded
by the social justice warriors has apparently given them the mandate to attempt to control what
Americans are allowed to think or say while also at the same time upending the common values
that have made the country functional. It is a revolution of sorts, and those who object most
strongly could well be the first to go to the guillotine.
Are you ready for this week's absurdity? Here's our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous
stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity and on
occasion, inspiring poetic justice.
Beethoven is a symbol of "exclusion and elitism"
The woke mob is attempting to cancel one of the most famous pieces of music in history
– Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.
Their aim? To thwart "wealthy white men who embraced Beethoven and turned his symphony into
a symbol of their superiority and importance."
Come again?
Prior to Beethoven in the mid 1700s, lower class Europeans would regularly attend
symphonies. And they were apparently quite a rowdy bunch– hooting and hollering all
throughout the performance, like a modern day rock concert.
Around the time that Beethoven rose to prominence in the early 1800s, however, the lower
classes were excluded from attending symphonies because they didn't keep quiet and applaud at
the appropriate time.
So today's woke mob believes that by playing or enjoying Beethoven's Fifth, you are
glorifying the exclusion of poor people, and by extension, women and minorities.
ay_arrow
Billy the Poet , 5 hours ago
Jon Voight as Conrack introduces his students to Beecloven:
Movies where a white person educates poor children of color are racist, obviously.
Unknown User , 4 hours ago
War is Peace / Freedom is Slavery / Ignorance is Strength
Unknown User , 3 hours ago
"He has made a marvellous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his
hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian,
the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded
to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise,
and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but
it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The *** saw them all, beat
them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no
weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive
mind. All things are mortal but the ***; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the
secret of his immortality?" - Mark Twain
yerfej , 5 hours ago
When low IQ reetaryds are manipulated to seize control they immediately attack everything
beyond their cultural status and eliminate it. The west is witnessing rich progressive elites
leveraging idiots to destroy society. What is funny is the idiots doing the manual
destruction and footwork will of course get nothing out of all their efforts. They too will
be culled, eventually, as always.
Bay Area Guy , 5 hours ago
But Beethoven was disabled (deaf at 26 or 27), so the woke crowd is prejudiced against the
hearing impaired. They better self-cancel because of that.
drjimi , 4 hours ago
People don't go to classical music concerts because of the behavioral expectations????
Seriously???
People don't go to classical music concerts because they don't like classical music.
i can just as validly argue hip hop is elitist and exclusionary because I don't care for
the chimp-like antics of its imbecilic fans.
MilwaukeeMark , 5 hours ago
Beethoven refuses to bow to the elites of his time. He demanded a place at their tables
with them. He refused to become their hired help. Of course the left is too stupid to know
that history.
Pernicious Gold Phallusy , 2 hours ago
The poem used in the last, choral, movement of Beethoven's 9th symphony was written by
Friedrich Schiller and is know as "An die Freude", translated as Ode To Joy. But Schiller
originally wrote the poem as "An die Freie" or "To the Free." Europe was in the grip of
antimonarchic sentiment. The poem was not permitted to be published in Austria by the
Emperor's censors. Schiller changed the word throughout the poem from Freie to Freude, and
the censors permitted it. But everybody in the audience would have known this story, and
realized the meaning of the poem.
Joe A , 3 hours ago
That is what communism does: it deconstructs and destroys history because it is all bad.
History is a reminder of the oppression of the poor and downtrodden, of the class struggle.
Everywhere in communist Europe they tore down churches and historical buildings and replaced
them with ugly concrete colossal monstrosities.
Communists are insane.
Savvy , 3 hours ago
Rap is the most racist violent 'music' there is and they go after Beethoven? LOL
Jethro , 4 hours ago
The left is too stupid realize that they are creating the monsters that they've been
autisticly screeching about.
Choomwagon Roof Hits , 4 hours ago
Sort of like the Old Bolsheviks back in the USSR...
Patmos , 5 hours ago
Their aim? To thwart "wealthy white men who embraced Beethoven and turned his symphony
into a symbol of their superiority and importance."
I understand the desire of youth to shake things up when things don't seem right, to break
out of the mold. It's James Dean, Rebel Without A Cause.
The modern "woke" mob isn't that though, it's rheetards without a clue.
Fox News
Fox News
5.73M subscribers
SUBSCRIBE
White employees were informed that their so-called 'white' qualities were offensive and unacceptable.
#FoxNews
#Tucker
"... If your category is "white," bad news: you have no identity apart from your participation in white supremacy ("Anti-blackness is foundational to our very identities Whiteness has always been predicated on blackness"), which naturally means "a positive white identity is an impossible goal." ..."
"... DiAngelo instructs us there is nothing to be done here, except "strive to be less white." To deny this theory, or to have the effrontery to sneak away from the tedium of DiAngelo's lecturing – what she describes as "leaving the stress-inducing situation" – is to affirm her conception of white supremacy. This intellectual equivalent of the "ordeal by water" (if you float, you're a witch) is orthodoxy across much of academia. ..."
"... White Fragility is based upon the idea that human beings are incapable of judging each other by the content of their character, and if people of different races think they are getting along or even loving one another, they probably need immediate antiracism training. ..."
"... It takes a special kind of ignorant for an author to choose an example that illustrates the mathematical opposite of one's intended point, but this isn't uncommon in White Fragility, which may be the dumbest book ever written. It makes The Art of the Deal read like Anna Karenina. ..."
"... Yet these ideas are taking America by storm. The movement that calls itself "antiracism" – I think it deserves that name a lot less than "pro-lifers" deserve theirs and am amazed journalists parrot it without question – is complete in its pessimism about race relations. It sees the human being as locked into one of three categories: members of oppressed groups, allies, and white oppressors. ..."
"... This dingbat racialist cult, which has no art, music, literature, and certainly no comedy, is the vision of "progress" institutional America has chosen to endorse in the Trump era. Why? Maybe because it fits. It won't hurt the business model of the news media, which for decades now has been monetizing division and has known how to profit from moral panics and witch hunts since before Fleet street discovered the Mod/Rocker wars. ..."
"... For corporate America the calculation is simple. What's easier, giving up business models based on war, slave labor, and regulatory arbitrage, or benching Aunt Jemima? There's a deal to be made here, greased by the fact that the "antiracism" prophets promoted in books like White Fragility share corporate Americas instinctive hostility to privacy, individual rights, freedom of speech, etc. ..."
"... Corporate America doubtless views the current protest movement as something that can be addressed as an H.R. matter, among other things by hiring thousands of DiAngelos to institute codes for the proper mode of Black-white workplace interaction. ..."
"... If you're wondering what that might look like, here's DiAngelo explaining how she handled the fallout from making a bad joke while she was "facilitating antiracism training" at the office of one of her clients. ..."
"... DiAngelo doesn't grasp the joke flopped and has to be told two days later that one of her web developer clients was offended. In despair, she writes, "I seek out a friend who is white and has a solid understanding of cross-racial dynamics." ..."
"... After DiAngelo confesses her feelings of embarrassment, shame and guilt to the enlightened white cross-racial dynamics expert (everyone should have such a person on speed-dial), she approaches the offended web developer. She asks, "Would you be willing to grant me the opportunity to repair the racism I perpetrated toward you in that meeting?" At which point the web developer agrees, leading to a conversation establishing the parameters of problematic joke resolution. ..."
"... This dialogue straight out of South Park – "Is it okay if I touch your penis? No, you may not touch my penis at this time!" – has a good shot of becoming standard at every transnational corporation, law firm, university, newsroom, etc. ..."
"... One of the central tenets of DiAngelo's book (and others like it) is that racism cannot be eradicated and can only be managed through constant, "lifelong" vigilance, much like the battle with addiction . A useful theory, if your business is selling teams of high-priced toxicity-hunters to corporations as next-generation versions of efficiency experts -- in the fight against this disease, companies will need the help forever and ever. ..."
"... Cancelations already are happening too fast to track. In a phenomenon that will be familiar to students of Russian history, accusers are beginning to appear alongside the accused. Three years ago a popular Canadian writer named Hal Niedzviecki was denounced for expressing the opinion that "anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities." He reportedly was forced out of the Writer's Union of Canada for the crime of "cultural appropriation," and denounced as a racist by many, including a poet named Gwen Benaway. The latter said Niedzviecki "doesn't see the humanity of indigenous peoples." Last week, Benaway herself was denounced on Twitter for failing to provide proof that she was Indigenous. ..."
"... People everywhere today are being encouraged to snitch out schoolmates, parents, and colleagues for thoughtcrime. The New York Times wrote a salutary piece about high schoolers scanning social media accounts of peers for evidence of "anti-black racism" to make public, because what can go wrong with encouraging teenagers to start submarining each other's careers before they've even finished growing? ..."
This is part of a larger piece that will be made available to subscribers later this
week:
A core principle of the academic movement that shot through elite schools in America since
the early nineties was the view that individual rights, humanism, and the democratic process
are all just stalking-horses for white supremacy. The concept, as articulated in books like
former corporate consultant Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility (Amazon's #1
seller !) reduces everything, even the smallest and most innocent human interactions, to
racial power contests.
It's been mind-boggling to watch White Fragility celebrated in recent weeks. When it
surged past a Hunger Games book on bestseller lists, USA Today
cheered , "American readers are more interested in combatting racism than in literary
escapism." When DiAngelo appeared on The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon
gushed , "I know everyone wants to talk to you right now!" White Fragility has been
pitched as an uncontroversial road-map for fighting racism, at a time when after the murder of
George Floyd Americans are suddenly (and appropriately) interested in doing just that. Except
this isn't a straightforward book about examining one's own prejudices. Have the people hyping
this impressively crazy book actually read it?
DiAngelo isn't the first person to make a buck pushing tricked-up pseudo-intellectual
horseshit as corporate wisdom, but she might be the first to do it selling Hitlerian race
theory. White Fragility has a simple message: there is no such thing as a universal
human experience, and we are defined not by our individual personalities or moral choices, but
only by our racial category.
If your category is "white," bad news: you have no identity apart from your participation in
white supremacy ("Anti-blackness is foundational to our very identities Whiteness has always
been predicated on blackness"), which naturally means "a positive white identity is an
impossible goal."
DiAngelo instructs us there is nothing to be done here, except "strive to be less white." To
deny this theory, or to have the effrontery to sneak away from the tedium of DiAngelo's
lecturing – what she describes as "leaving the stress-inducing situation" – is to
affirm her conception of white supremacy. This intellectual equivalent of the "ordeal by water"
(if you float, you're a witch) is orthodoxy across much of academia.
DiAngelo's writing style is pure pain. The lexicon favored by intersectional theorists of
this type is built around the same principles as Orwell's Newspeak : it banishes
ambiguity, nuance, and feeling and structures itself around sterile word pairs, like
racist and antiracist, platform and deplatform , center and
silence, that reduce all thinking to a series of binary choices . Ironically,
Donald Trump does something similar, only with words like " AMAZING !" and "
SAD !" that are
simultaneously more childish and livelier.
Writers like DiAngelo like to make ugly verbs out of ugly nouns and ugly nouns out of ugly
verbs (there are countless permutations on centering and privileging alone). In a
world where only a few ideas are considered important, redundancy is encouraged, e.g. "To be
less white is to break with white silence and white solidarity, to stop privileging the comfort
of white people," or "Ruth Frankenberg, a premier white scholar in the field of whiteness,
describes whiteness as multidimensional "
DiAngelo writes like a person who was put in timeout as a child for speaking clearly. "When
there is disequilibrium in the habitus -- when social cues are unfamiliar and/or when they
challenge our capital -- we use strategies to regain our balance," she says ("People taken out
of their comfort zones find ways to deal," according to Google Translate). Ideas that go
through the English-DiAngelo translator usually end up significantly altered, as in this key
part of the book when she addresses Dr. Martin Luther King's "I have a dream," speech:
One line of King's speech in particular -- that one day he might be judged by the content
of his character and not the color of his skin -- was seized upon by the white public because
the words were seen to provide a simple and immediate solution to racial tensions: pretend that
we don't see race, and racism will end. Color blindness was now promoted as the remedy for
racism, with white people insisting that they didn't see race or, if they did, that it had no
meaning to them.
That this speech was held up as the framework for American race relations for more than half
a century precisely because people of all races understood King to be referring to a difficult
and beautiful long-term goal worth pursuing is discounted, of course.
White Fragility is
based upon the idea that human beings are incapable of judging each other by the content of
their character, and if people of different races think they are getting along or even loving
one another, they probably need immediate antiracism training. This is an important passage
because rejection of King's "dream" of racial harmony -- not even as a description of the
obviously flawed present, but as the aspirational goal of a better future -- has become a
central tenet of this brand of antiracist doctrine mainstream press outlets are rushing to
embrace.
The book's most amazing passage concerns the story of Jackie Robinson:
The story of Jackie Robinson is a classic example of how whiteness obscures racism by
rendering whites, white privilege, and racist institutions invisible. Robinson is often
celebrated as the first African American to break the color line
While Robinson was certainly an amazing baseball player, this story line depicts him as
racially special, a black man who broke the color line himself. The subtext is that Robinson
finally had what it took to play with whites, as if no black athlete before him was strong
enough to compete at that level. Imagine if instead, the story went something like this:
"Jackie Robinson, the first black man whites allowed to play major-league baseball."
There is not a single baseball fan anywhere – literally not one, except perhaps Robin
DiAngelo, I guess – who believes Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier because he
"finally had what it took to play with whites." Everyone familiar with this story understands
that Robinson had to be exceptional, both as a player and as a human being, to confront the
racist institution known as Major League Baseball.
His story has always been understood as a
complex, long-developing political tale about overcoming violent systemic oppression. For DiAngelo to suggest history should re-cast Robinson as "the first black man whites allowed to
play major league baseball" is grotesque and profoundly belittling.
Robinson's story moreover did not render "whites, white privilege, and racist institutions
invisible." It did the opposite. Robinson uncovered a generation of job inflation for mediocre
white ballplayers in a dramatic example of "privilege" that was keenly understood by baseball
fans of all races fifty years before White Fragility. Baseball statistics nerds have
long been arguing about whether to put asterisks next to
the records of white stars who never had to pitch to Josh Gibson, or hit against prime Satchel
Paige or Webster McDonald. Robinson's story, on every level, exposed and evangelized the truth
about the very forces DiAngelo argues it rendered "invisible."
It takes a special kind of ignorant for an author to choose an example that illustrates the
mathematical opposite of one's intended point, but this isn't uncommon in White
Fragility, which may be the dumbest book ever written. It makes The Art of the Deal
read like Anna Karenina.
Yet these ideas are taking America by storm. The movement that calls itself "antiracism"
– I think it deserves that name a lot less than "pro-lifers" deserve theirs and am amazed
journalists parrot it without question – is complete in its pessimism about race
relations. It sees the human being as locked into one of three categories: members of oppressed
groups, allies, and white oppressors.
Where we reside on the spectrum of righteousness is, they say, almost entirely determined by
birth, a view probably shared by a lot of 4chan readers. With a full commitment to the
program of psychological ablutions outlined in the book, one may strive for a "less white
identity," but again, DiAngelo explicitly rejects the Kingian goal of just trying to love one
another as impossible, for two people born with different skin colors.
This dingbat racialist cult, which has no art, music, literature, and certainly no comedy,
is the vision of "progress" institutional America has chosen to endorse in the Trump era. Why?
Maybe because it fits. It won't hurt the business model of the news media, which for decades
now has been monetizing division and has known how to profit from moral panics and witch hunts
since before Fleet street discovered the Mod/Rocker wars.
Democratic Party leaders, pioneers of the costless gesture, have already embraced this
performative race politics as a useful tool for disciplining apostates like Bernie Sanders.
Bernie took off in presidential politics as a hard-charging crusader against a Wall
Street-fattened political establishment, and exited four years later a self-flagellating,
defeated old white man who seemed to regret not apologizing more for his third house. Clad in
kente cloth scarves, the Democrats who crushed him will burn up CSPAN with homilies on
privilege even as they reassure donors they'll stay away from Medicare for All or the carried
interest tax break.
For corporate America the calculation is simple. What's easier, giving up business models
based on war, slave labor, and regulatory arbitrage, or benching Aunt Jemima? There's a deal to
be made here, greased by the fact that the "antiracism" prophets promoted in books like
White Fragility share corporate Americas instinctive hostility to privacy, individual
rights, freedom of speech, etc.
Corporate America doubtless views the current protest movement as something that can be
addressed as an H.R. matter, among other things by hiring thousands of DiAngelos to institute
codes for the proper mode of Black-white workplace interaction.
If you're wondering what that might look like, here's DiAngelo explaining how she handled
the fallout from making a bad joke while she was "facilitating antiracism training" at the
office of one of her clients.
When one employee responds negatively to the training, DiAngelo quips the person must have
been put off by one of her Black female team members: "The white people," she says, "were
scared by Deborah's hair." (White priests of antiracism like DiAngelo seem universally to be
more awkward and clueless around minorities than your average Trump-supporting construction
worker).
DiAngelo doesn't grasp the joke flopped and has to be told two days later that one of her
web developer clients was offended. In despair, she writes, "I seek out a friend who is white
and has a solid understanding of cross-racial dynamics."
After DiAngelo confesses her feelings of embarrassment, shame and guilt to the enlightened
white cross-racial dynamics expert (everyone should have such a person on speed-dial), she
approaches the offended web developer. She asks, "Would you be willing to grant me the
opportunity to repair the racism I perpetrated toward you in that meeting?" At which point the
web developer agrees, leading to a conversation establishing the parameters of problematic joke
resolution.
This dialogue straight
out ofSouth
Park – "Is it okay if I touch your penis? No, you may not touch my penis at this
time!" – has a good shot of becoming standard at every transnational corporation, law
firm, university, newsroom, etc.
Of course the upside such consultants can offer is an important one. Under pressure from
people like this, companies might address long-overdue inequities in boardroom diversity.
The downside, which we're already seeing, is that organizations everywhere will embrace
powerful new tools for solving professional disputes, through a never-ending purge. One of the
central tenets of DiAngelo's book (and others like it) is that racism cannot be eradicated and
can only be managed through constant, "lifelong" vigilance, much like the
battle with addiction . A useful theory, if your business is selling teams of high-priced
toxicity-hunters to corporations as next-generation versions of efficiency experts -- in the
fight against this disease, companies will need the help forever and ever.
Cancelations already are happening too fast to track. In a phenomenon that will be familiar
to students of Russian history, accusers are beginning to appear alongside the accused. Three
years ago a popular Canadian writer named Hal Niedzviecki was
denounced for expressing the opinion that "anyone, anywhere, should be encouraged to
imagine other peoples, other cultures, other identities." He reportedly was forced out of the
Writer's Union of Canada for the crime of "cultural appropriation," and denounced as a racist
by many, including a poet named Gwen Benaway. The latter said Niedzviecki "doesn't see the
humanity of indigenous peoples." Last week, Benaway herself was denounced on Twitter for failing
to provide proof that she was Indigenous.
Michael Korenberg, the chair of the board at the University of British Columbia, was
forced to
resign for liking tweets by Dinesh D'Souza and Donald Trump, which you might think is fine
– but what about Latino electrical worker Emmanuel Cafferty, fired
after a white activist took a photo of him making an OK symbol (it was described online as a
"white power" sign)? How about Sue Schafer, the heretofore unknown graphic designer the
Washington Post
decided to out in a 3000-word article for attending a Halloween party two years ago in
blackface (a failed parody of a different blackface incident involving Megyn Kelly)? She
was fired, of course. How was this news? Why was ruining this person's life necessary?
People everywhere today are being encouraged to snitch out schoolmates, parents, and
colleagues for thoughtcrime. The New York Times wrote a
salutary piece about high schoolers scanning social media accounts of peers for evidence of
"anti-black racism" to make public, because what can go wrong with encouraging teenagers to
start submarining each other's careers before they've even finished growing?
"People who go to college end up becoming racist lawyers and doctors. I don't want people
like that to keep getting jobs," one 16 year-old said. "Someone rly started a Google doc of
racists and their info for us to ruin their lives I love twitter," wrote a different person,
adding cheery emojis.
A bizarre echo of North Korea's "
three generations of punishment " doctrine could be seen in the
boycotts of Holy Land grocery , a well-known hummus maker in Minneapolis. In recent weeks
it's been abandoned by clients and seen
its lease pulled because of racist tweets made by the CEO's 14 year-old daughter eight
years ago.
Parents calling out their kids is also in vogue. In Slate, "Making a Mountain Out of
a Molehill" wrote to advice columnist Michelle Herman in a letter headlined, " I
think I've screwed up the way my kids think about race ." The problem, the aggrieved parent
noted, was that his/her sons had gone to a diverse school, and their "closest friends are still
a mix of black, Hispanic, and white kids," which to them was natural. The parent worried when
one son was asked to fill out an application for a potential college roommate and expressed
annoyance at having to specify race, because "I don't care about race."
Clearly, a situation needing fixing! The parent asked if someone who didn't care about race
was "just as racist as someone who only has white friends" and asked if it was "too late" to do
anything. No fear, Herman wrote: it's never too late for kids like yours to educate themselves.
To help, she linked to a program of materials designed for just that purpose, a " Lesson
Plan for Being An Ally ," that included a month of readings of White Fragility.
Hopefully that kid with the Black and Hispanic friends can be cured!
This notion that color-blindness is itself racist, one of the main themes of White
Fragility , could have amazing consequences. In researching I Can't Breathe, I met
civil rights activists who recounted decades of struggle to remove race from the law. I heard
stories of lawyers who were physically threatened for years in places like rural Arkansas just
for trying to end explicit hiring and housing discrimination and other remnants of Jim Crow.
Last week, an Oregon County casually exempted "people of color
who have heightened concerns about racial profiling" from a Covid-19 related mask order. Who
thinks creating different laws for different racial categories is going to end well? When has
it ever?
At a time of catastrophe and national despair, when conservative nationalism is on the rise
and violent confrontation on the streets is becoming commonplace, it's extremely suspicious
that the books politicians, the press, university administrators, and corporate consultants
alike are asking us to read are urging us to put race even more at the center of our
identities, and fetishize the unbridgeable nature of our differences. Meanwhile books like
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird, which are both
beautiful and actually anti-racist, have been banned, for
containing the "N-word ." ( White Fragility contains it too, by the way). It's
almost like someone thinks there's a benefit to keeping people divided.
Looks like neoliberal Dems are playing with fire. Another couple of such success stories and
Biden can safely enroll to the assisted living senior citizen community where he belongs. This is
an excellent way to mobilize Trump voters. Just look at the comments section of this story.
This is somewhat similar to hysteria in Germany in 1930th.
Notable quotes:
"... And Costco was once a retail store. Bravo! Today transformed into a political party? ..."
Costco has halted sales of Palmetto Cheese, a popular brand of pimento cheese spread that
had been offered in over 120 of its stores, after the company's owner triggered outrage with a
Facebook post criticizing Black Lives Matter.
A sign posted at a store in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, indicates that Palmetto Cheese has
been discontinued and will not be ordered again by Costco. The retailer hasn't made a statement
on its decision, but the move came after consumers called for a boycott of the brand because of
social media comments by Palmetto Cheese's owner, Brian Henry.
"This BLM and Antifa movement must be treated like the terror organizations that they
are," Henry said in an August 25 Facebook post that has since been deleted. He wrote the
message in response to the alleged shootings of three white people by a black man in
Georgetown, South Carolina. He complained that BLM and Antifa were being allowed to
"lawlessly destroy great American cities and threaten their citizens on a daily basis"
and declared "All lives matter. There, I said it. So am I a racist now?"
The reaction on social media was swift, with commenters calling Henry a racist. Activists
jumped into action with a boycott campaign against Palmetto Cheese. A Twitter account was set
up mocking the company as "Appropriation Cheese," because of its use of a black woman on
its packaging who worked for the company before dying earlier this year.
Activists on the Appropriation Cheese page celebrated Costco's decision and pressed for
more. One commenter on Tuesday thanked Costco and demanded that Kroger, Lowes Foods and other
retailers cancel Palmetto Cheese. Another boycott supporter called on Publix Super Markets to
drop the product, saying: "Costco pulled Palmetto Cheese because of the open racism of its
owner. We are hoping you are considering the same." Still another said: "Attention
Corporate America. This is how you ally."
But others lamented Costco's move and the divisiveness it represents. "This is how
divided the country has become," one commenter tweeted. "Even store chains are picking
sides now. This is insane." There were those who defended Henry, saying that criticizing
the group doesn't mean that one is racist.
Henry, who also is mayor of the small South Carolina coastal town of Pawleys Island, may
have squandered a chance to inspire a boycott-backlash movement – like that which Goya
Foods enjoyed after its owner was vilified for praising President Donald Trump – when he
issued an apology on September 3.
He said his comments were "hurtful and insensitive."
"I spent the last 10 days listening and learning," Henry said. "The conversations
I have had with friends, our staff, the community and faith-based leaders provided me with a
deeper understanding of racial inequality and the importance of diversity
sensitivity."
Henry added that his family and company will donate $100,000 in the first year of a new
foundation set up to improve race relations, and Palmetto Cheese will rebrand its product
"to be more sensitive to cultural diversity." In addition to having a picture of a black
woman, the current packaging refers to Palmetto Cheese as "the pimento cheese with
soul."
The company sold more than 15 million units last year in about 4,000 stores. Henry warned
that a boycott would only hurt the hundreds of people employed by the company in South
Carolina.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
uncledon 8 hours ago
I
guess I'm a racist as I believe all lives matter! I believe that people have a reason and the
right to peacefully protest. People do not have a right to murder, to plunder, to destroy
properties and businesses, to loot and set fires! If these things are done under the BLM
movement it is lawlessness. If we are to have a peaceful and productive society we need law and
order not total chaos. If the BLM wants to make change, (and change is sorely needed) then sets
some rules in your organized protest that gives it strength and power. Every smashed window,
every fire, every looted business and every intimidation to innocent bystanders is a reason for
people like myself not to support your cause.
KarlthePoet 9 hours ago
It's too bad that the
American consumers haven't started a boycott of the Jewish Banking Cartel, which ultimately
controls the US government and Wall Street. A cheese spread isn't the problem in America.
JG1547 10 hours ago
And the stupidity continues. Sad
CrabbyB 7 hours ago
Avoid social media
other than trying to garner sales. Avoid any chit-chat or opinions, just bare minimum contact
that suits your business purpose and that's it. The mob harmed but using Fakebook as a soapbox
was the big mistake
VillageIdiot34 4 hours ago
Keep it up amerimutts.
With this rate of
acceleration we are talking civil war before Christmas. I can already see it; the corporate
communists, backed by every globalist for-profit corporations against "real capitalism has
never been tried" gang. Less fighting abroad, more fighting domestic. It's a win/win for
everyone else
Jack The Man 3 hours ago
Absolutely right and principled action by
Costco. And BTW, who on earth would like to eat this processed garbage anyway?
rightmove 5
hours ago
And Costco was once a retail store. Bravo! Today transformed into a political party?
I'm in Australia and won't be shopping at Costco. The customer can decide if the BLM impacts
their choice of merchandise, not the damn seller.
Mistermal 6 hours ago
According to Webster's
Dictionary: "The use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political
purposes." Costco CEO simply told the truth. BLM is an openly racist, violent hate group.
Alan
Hart 3 hours ago
Will Costco also ban Israeli goods - because of their criticism of PLM
(Palestinian Lives Matter)...??
Flyingscotsman 3 hours ago
Simple, boycott Costco. I bet all
these so called republican white Supremacist racists spend more there , than all these keyboard
woke warriors!
"... The leaders of this new movement are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about tolerance, free inquiry, and even racial harmony with ideas so toxic and unattractive that they eschew debate, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation. They are counting on the guilt-ridden, self-flagellating nature of traditional American progressives, who will not stand up for themselves, and will walk to the Razor voluntarily. ..."
"... They've conned organization after organization into empowering panels to search out thoughtcrime, and it's established now that anything can be an offense ..."
On the other side of the political aisle, among self-described liberals, we're watching an
intellectual revolution. It feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact,
but the American left has lost its mind. It's become a cowardly mob of upper-class social
media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching
reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.
The leaders of this new movement are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about
tolerance, free inquiry, and even racial harmony with ideas so toxic and unattractive that
they eschew debate, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation. They are counting
on the guilt-ridden, self-flagellating nature of traditional American progressives, who will
not stand up for themselves, and will walk to the Razor voluntarily.
They've conned organization after organization into empowering panels to search out
thoughtcrime, and it's established now that anything can be an offense
A "cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts"? The "guilt-ridden, self-flagellating
nature of traditional American progressives, who will not stand up for themselves"? Geeeeee,
sure does remind me of someone....
"... Seeking to impose on others the conformity it enforces in its ranks, articulate only in a boilerplate of ritualized cant, today's lumpen intelligentsia consists of persons for whom a little learning is delightful. They consider themselves educated because they are credentialed, stamped with the approval of institutions of higher education that gave them three things: a smattering of historical information just sufficient to make the past seem depraved; a vocabulary of indignation about the failure of all previous historic actors, from Washington to Lincoln to Churchill , to match the virtues of the lumpen intelligentsia; and the belief that America's grossest injustice is the insufficient obeisance accorded to this intelligentsia. ..."
"... Today's cancel culture -- erasing history, ending careers -- is inflicted by people experiencing an orgy of positive feelings about themselves as they negate others. This culture is a steamy sauna of self-congratulation: "I, an adjunct professor of gender studies, am superior to U.S. Grant, so there." Grant promptly freed the slave he received from his father-in-law, and went on to pulverize the slavocracy. Nevertheless . . . ..."
"... Today's gruesome irony: A significant portion of the intelligentsia that is churned out by higher education does not acknowledge exacting standards of inquiry that could tug them toward tentativeness and constructive dissatisfaction with themselves. Rather, they come from campuses, cloaked in complacency. Instead of elevating, their education produces only expensively schooled versions of what José Ortega y Gasset called the "mass man." ..."
"... A barbarian is someone whose ideas are "nothing more than appetites in words," someone exercising "the right not to be reasonable," who "does not want to give reasons" but simply "to impose his opinions." ..."
"... The barbarians are not at America's gate. There is no gate. ..."
A nation's gravest problems are those it cannot discuss because it dare not state them. This
nation's principal problem, which makes other serious problems intractable, is that much of
today's intelligentsia is not intelligent.
One serious problem is that the political class is terrified of its constituents -- their
infantile refusal to will the means (revenue) for the ends (government benefits) they demand.
Another serious problem is family
disintegration -- e.g., 40 percent of all births, and 69 percent of all African American
births, to unmarried women. Families are the primary transmitters of social capital: the
habits, dispositions and mores necessary for flourishing. Yet the subject of disorganized
families has been entirely absent from current discussions -- actually, less discussions than
virtue-signaling ventings -- about poverty, race and related matters.
Today's most serious problem, which annihilates thoughtfulness about all others, is that a
significant portion of the intelligentsia -- the lumpen intelligentsia -- cannot think. Its
torrent of talk is an ever-intensifying hurricane of hysteria about the endemic sickness of the
nation since its founding in
1619 (don't ask). And the iniquities of historic figures mistakenly admired.
An admirable intelligentsia, inoculated by education against fashions and fads, would make
thoughtful distinctions arising from historically informed empathy. It would be society's
ballast against mob mentalities. Instead, much of America's intelligentsia has become a
mob.
Seeking to impose on others the conformity it enforces in its ranks, articulate only in
a boilerplate of ritualized cant, today's lumpen intelligentsia consists of persons for whom a
little learning is delightful. They consider themselves educated because they are credentialed,
stamped with the approval of institutions of higher education that gave them three things: a
smattering of historical information just sufficient to make the past seem depraved; a
vocabulary of indignation about the failure of all previous historic actors, from Washington to
Lincoln to
Churchill
, to match the virtues of the lumpen intelligentsia; and the belief that America's grossest
injustice is the insufficient obeisance accorded to this intelligentsia.
Its expansion tracks the expansion of colleges and universities -- most have, effectively,
open admissions -- that have become intellectually monochrome purveyors of groupthink. Faculty
are outnumbered by administrators, many of whom exist to administer uniformity concerning
"sustainability," "diversity," "toxic masculinity" and the threat free speech poses to favored
groups' entitlements to serenity.
Today's cancel culture -- erasing history, ending careers -- is inflicted by people
experiencing an orgy of positive feelings about themselves as they negate others. This culture
is a steamy sauna of self-congratulation: "I, an adjunct professor of gender studies, am
superior to U.S. Grant, so there." Grant promptly freed
the slave he received from his father-in-law, and went on to pulverize the slavocracy.
Nevertheless . . .
The cancelers need just enough learning to know, vaguely, that there was a Lincoln who lived
when Americans, sunk in primitivism, thought they were confronted with vexing constitutional
constraints and moral ambiguities. : Too much learning might immobilize the topplers with
doubts about how they would have behaved in the contexts in which the statues' subjects
lived.
The cancelers are reverse Rumpelstiltskins , spinning problems that
merit the gold of complex ideas and nuanced judgments into the straw of slogans. Someone
anticipated something like this.
Today's gruesome irony: A significant portion of the intelligentsia that is churned out
by higher education does not acknowledge exacting standards of inquiry that could tug them
toward tentativeness and constructive dissatisfaction with themselves. Rather, they come from
campuses, cloaked in complacency. Instead of elevating, their education produces only
expensively schooled versions of what José Ortega y Gasset called the "mass
man."
In 1932's "
The Revolt of the Masses ," the Spanish philosopher said this creature does not " appeal
from his own to any authority outside him . He is satisfied with himself exactly as he is.
. . . He will tend to consider and affirm as good everything he finds within himself: opinions,
appetites, preferences, tastes." (Emphasis is Ortega's.)
Much education now spreads the disease that education should cure, the disease of
repudiating, without understanding, the national principles that could pull the nation toward
its noble aspirations. The result is barbarism, as Ortega defined it, "the absence of standards
to which appeal can be made."
A barbarian is someone whose ideas are "nothing more than appetites in words," someone
exercising "the right not to be reasonable," who "does not want to give reasons" but simply "to
impose his opinions."
The barbarians are not at America's gate. There is no gate.
ou remember Ian Buruma, right? He was forced to resign as editor of The New York Review
of Books in 2018 after he published an essay by the Canadian broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi, who
was accused and acquitted of sexual assault. Now, Buruma talks to The Telegraph about his new book (on
Churchill and Britain's "special relationship" with America) and "cancel culture":
Having been toppled himself, he is worried that cancel culture will lead to 'a kind of
timidity and fear and caution on the part of people who edit and write. The whole point of
being a good editor is having the freedom sometimes to do something that might be
provocative, because that helps debate, and debate helps people think. And if you cancel that
out, you get a sort of boring and fearful conformity that is inimical to a lively
intellectual and artistic culture.'
He sees the new 'intolerance and puritanism' as a substitute for religion. 'It is
particularly strong in the New World, in Australia, Canada and the United States, and Britain
to a slightly lesser extent, than in non-English-speaking countries. There is a sort of
puritanical zeal that is very strong in America and the intolerance of unorthodoxy may be a
secular version of it.'
The point of Ghomeshi's article, he says, was to explore the question of how we set the
perimeters of the length and severity of the punishments doled out by the court of public
opinion. 'I deliberately did not want the article to be about what he had done, there was no
way that I wanted to stick up for that or defend it. I was interested in it because it was a
voice that hadn't been heard, somebody who'd actually had that experience.'
Is there not a danger that his viewpoint might be a bit too detached, I ask? Isn't there
an argument that the many abused women who never even get to see their abuser in court and
feel unheard are quite right to be angry that a liberal magazine should give a voice to
somebody like Ghomeshi?
'Well that's probably true, statistically, that most cases of abuse go unreported and
therefore we never hear about them. But it would be false to say that the voices of women, or
men for that matter, who've been abused in one way or another have never been heard –
we've heard quite a few, maybe not enough, but we've heard them. So I don't think that that
is right.'
Has being 'cancelled' affected him much? 'All I will say is that certain publications I
used to write for do not ask me any more because it would upset people – not so much
readers but people who work for those publications.
'I don't miss being in an office, I'm perfectly happy sitting in my own office writing
whatever I want, but I miss the job in the sense that I could have done something interesting
with [the NYRB] and I no longer can. I wanted to have more voices from South America, more on
Africa, Asia. I think the problem with a lot of American publications today is that they look
inward too much.'
In other news: Thomas Homer-Dixon says reading The Lord of the Rings made him a
better parent. He explains why in The
Walrus : "Many Christian commentators and scholars say Tolkien espoused a Christian hope
based on faith in redemption and God's ultimate intervention. (He was a devout Roman Catholic.)
By this view, hope, which in this case would be Estel, can remain secure because we know God
will take care of us in the end. Other Tolkien aficionados have argued that he eschewed hope
entirely: his protagonists keep going because of nothing more than their ardent commitment to
courage and cheer regardless of what the future seems to hold. Neither argument convinces me. I
see little hint of Christian eschatology in the pages of The Lord of the Rings, and the book's
life philosophy is deeply informed by Norse, Germanic, and Celtic myth. Indeed, to my mind,
Tolkien's heroes possess the Finnish virtue sisu , which translates roughly as 'fierce
tenacity' or 'toughness' and indicates inner strength in the face of daunting odds."
Richard Mabey reviews Helen Macdonald's
Vesper Flights : "I longed for a bird that was just itself, not a token of class war or
a sop to emotional neediness."
Richard Reinsch reviews George
Weigel's The Next Pope : "Weigel's book is an attempt to spell out spiritual criteria
for the next pope -- to explain, in his view, how the next pope should act in order to revive
the church's fortunes in the modern world. There are many elephants in the room here, but one
of the biggest, prudently left unnamed by Weigel, is Pope Francis's pontificate. Weigel drops
small vignettes throughout the book of what the next pope must do and not do."
What's wrong with the university today? Many things, but the main problem, Mario Biagioli
argues, is a preoccupation with gaming the
system rather than focusing on its core purpose: teaching and research. "According to
Goodhart's Law, as soon as a measure becomes a target, gaming ensues, which undermines its
function as a measure. Charles Goodhart, an economist, was referring to the gaming of economic
indicators, but his law applies equally well to all sorts of regimes of evaluation, including
the metrics that command so much authority in today's higher education. Universities are
investing ever more heavily in curating and occasionally faking figures that enhance their
national and global rankings, while simultaneously keeping those metrics in mind when deciding
anything from campus development projects to class size. (Architecturally ambitious campuses
attract alumni giving, which is a positive factor in the U.S. News & World Report rankings
of universities, as are classes capped at 19 students.) Now in full swing, this trend started
inconspicuously a few decades ago. Already in 1996, Northeastern University's president,
Richard Freeland, observed that 'schools ranked highly received increased visibility and
prestige, stronger applicants, more alumni giving, and, most important, greater revenue
potential. A low rank left a university scrambling for money. This single list [ ] had the
power to make or break a school.' Freeland quickly figured out which numbers Northeastern
needed to privilege. Ranked 162nd in 1996, Northeastern jumped to 98th in 2006 and, ten years
after his departure, 47th in 2016. This trend goes hand in hand with another distinctive
feature of the modern university: the discourse of excellence. Because 'excellence' is devoid
of a referent that can be either empirically or conceptually defined -- its meaning effectively
boiling down to 'being great at whatever one may be doing' "
Jeremy Seaton reviews a new edition of
Russell Kirk's Old House of Fear : "While the novel itself remains unaltered so far as I
can tell, the current edition features the addition of a wonderful introduction by James Panero
that offers much insight into both Kirk and his works. This edition also restores Kirk's
dedication of the volume: 'This Gothick tale, in unblushing line of direct descent from The
Castle of Otranto , I do inscribe to Abigail Fay.' This inscription, brief as it is, offers
valuable revelations regarding the Old House of Fear and its residents."
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Why time flies when you're old : "Over
a three-minute period, younger people can count down the seconds almost perfectly. Older
people, on the other hand, can be out by as much as forty seconds -- meaning that if they
counted seconds for an hour they'd think the task done with around the 47-minute mark. It
sounds paradoxical, but it's that slowing of the older person's body clock that leads to their
faster counting -- and their feeling that the rest of the world is speeding up."
In search of the English Proust :
"Writing to his publisher Gaston Gallimard, Proust opted for an unusually crisp register: 'I
refuse to let the English destroy my work.' He was protesting at translator C. K. Scott
Moncrieff's use of a pretty Shakespeare quotation ( Remembrance of Things Past ) for his
analytically more precise title ( À la recherche du temps perdu ), not to mention
the now iconic but misleading Swann's Way (for Du côté de chez Swann
). He softened, though his subsequent communications with Scott Moncrieff himself are best
represented as polite rather than cordial. Scott Moncrieff remains nevertheless the true hero
in the story of Proust in English, and any bad feeling on Proust's part is a mere bagatelle
compared to how he would have felt about John Middleton Murry's unintelligible proposition: 'No
English reader will get more out of reading Du côté de chez Swann in French
than he will out of reading Swann's Way in English.' It is, alas, the sort of thing that
also infected Conrad, who came up with the lunatic claim that Moncrieff's Proust was superior
to Proust's Proust."
Receive Prufrock in your inbox every weekday morning. Subscribehere.ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Micah Mattix is the literary editor of The American Conservative and an associate
professor of English at Regent University. His work has appeared in The Wall Street
Journal , National Review , The Weekly Standard , Pleiades , The
Washington Times , and many other publications. His latest book is The Soul Is a
Stranger in this World: Essays on Poets and Poetry (Cascade). Follow him on Twitter .
Ian Buruma highlighted something I've also noticed from the woke mob: Despite their
supposed advocacy of global societies and non-white voices, they completely ignore the
experiences, struggles, and contradictions of global people, especially the Global South. The
persecution of women and girls in Muslim societies is an inconvenient topic for the
intersectional mob, balancing feminism and anti-Christian sentiments. The extremely prominent
colorism of Latin American is inconvenient, balanced between an always uneasy coalition
between Latino and Black Americans.
"And if you cancel that out, you get a sort of boring and fearful conformity that is
inimical to a lively intellectual and artistic culture." In the old country, that was called
"the wooden tongue". You really can't do nothing with such an instrument...
"In moments of despair it had occurred to me that there was something of a medieval Dark Age
about the current mood: Extinction Rebellion with its child saints and the self-flagellating
Woke culture. Being given an apparently sound reason to disable the most notable manifestations
of that historical tradition which we are now being encouraged to denounce: what could be
better suited to the weird, vaguely hysterical, fashion of the times?
Fear may be the most dangerous contagion but I am coming around to the view that this is not
simple fear. It is a mass neurosis of which irrational and prolonged anxiety is a symptom: a
corrosive loss of confidence and understanding of one's role and identity which will, if it
prevails, ultimately undermine the quality of modern life more irrevocably than any virus.
It is not only our official cultural institutions that are at risk here. One of the most
fundamental principles of post-war liberal democracy is on trial – or, at least, coming
up for examination." The Telegraph
--------------
Yes, I know. I am becoming even more boring about this, but Daly has her finger on the
essence of the matter. The call to wokeness is a siren song enlisting neurotic adherence to
a cause that demands rejection of the world as we have known it and the creation of a utopian
cult that does not know its own creed.
That remains to emerge when the putative victors in the struggle for a woke world fall
upon each other for control. What would President Bidoharris do in such a circumstance?
IMO they would cave in and the street fanatics would rule a barren landscape that was once a
prosperous and well run country. pl
IMO, This phenomenon is not organic. Rather, it has been deliberately induced by the
enemies of democracy and of the US - some of these enemies are foreign powers, some are
foreign individuals and some are domestic, and of those, even within our own government.
Allies with a common objective for the time being.
The US govt began systematically developing mind control techniques in the 1950s that
built on the work of Bernays. Some of the programs were for controlling individuals (e.g.
MK-ULTRA) and some for controlling masses. Those programs have come to fruition and are being
applied to the US population. It's easy now with mass media, social media and everyone being
wired into their devices 24/7.
As much as the Democrats have a war room, that war room is taking orders from another one
that is higher up the chain of command, IMO.
The current panic/hysteria could be reversed or morphed into something more positive
within a year if the powers running this operation wanted it to be done, but they don't want
that. They want to wreak havoc and destruction. They make a James Bond villain look like
child's play.
A terrified world was ready to believe in the Zombie Apocalypse. What are the roots of
that predeliction?
"Covid" was not the trigger; only the spark that set off the tinder already gathered. Loss
of religion - substituting drugs for the pain of personal growth - broken families - mass
media - age of disinformation - retreats from the challenges of daily interpersonal
connection to interactions by choice behind the computer screens
Rollo May, in his book "Love and Will" nailed it in the 1960's - the Age of Aquarius will
become the Age of Addiction- life-affirming passion is being replaced by life-sapping
lust.
However, this describes only the malaise and our own choices to this this mainstream.
There are still incredible people out there that reject all of the above. As the 1960's
taught us, if we are not part of the solution, we are part of the problem. And part of the
problem may be tuning into the malaise ourselves and blocking out where the sunshine still
exists.
Mea culpa. Playing one of Eric Berne's Games People Play - "Ain't it Awful?"
What is the creed of the liberals, Colonel? Who are the liberal gods? Do you think the
problems facing western civilisation are a consequence of it turning its back on them? I have
a different thesis: The west didn't turn its back on the liberal gods. It embraced them
wholeheartedly, so much so it has now earned an audience with their prince, in his own abode
no less.
In the case of the ongoing George Fentanyl riots I would suggest that this is a mass
psychotic episode, caused by everything mentioned in the article plus drug use, especially
constant, long-term, vaporized marijuana use.
I don't think it is a coincidence that the worst of the rioting has occurred where
marijuana has either been legalized or effectively decriminalized.
You mean the Obamas and the Clintons? They do look a bit "alien" in the best sense of the
word. Barry rode a fantastic "train" of scholarships all the way to editor of the Harvard Law
Review. Michele and her brother were the beneficiaries of the Daly Machine's gratitude to her
father's role as a ward healer. This seems an amazing sequence of events in an indelibly
racist country.
Regarding the climatic aspects of it at least, there is some evidence in peer-reviewed
journals that there may be a Maunder Minimum beginning in the 2030, resulting in a
significant drop in average temperature. It's related to sunspot cycles. [Note: I'm citing a
popularization of it here:] https://www.livescience.com/51597-maunder-minimum-mini-ice-age.html
.
The detailed peer-reviewed article aboutmit in Nature is quite lengthy and technical.
Post 9-11, Dick Cheney pushed the One Percent Doctrine to justify invading Iraq - if there
is a one percent chance Saddam has nuclear weapons, the US must treat this as a 100%
chance.
This One Percent doctrine became widely discredited, and Ron Suskind wrote a book about it
- how indeed were government decisions made during the War on Terror?
How much of the One Percent Doctrine remains embedded in government decisions today, when
faced with the War on Covid? If it was discredited as the Cheney Doctrine as 100% overkill,
why is it still applied as our model for "covid" decision making?
Shut 100% down if there is a 1% risk -that some will die, and in fact some did die.
Shouldn't we be talking about this?
In the case of George Flloyd (et al) why has there been a pathologic avoidance in
virtually all media, right and left, to even mention resisting arrest and drug use as co
factors in these person's ultimate outcomes?
If one tried to raise these issues all one got back is "he did not deserve to die even if
he was a criminal high on drugs", "he did not deserve to be killed over passing a $20 bill"
......... that a death alone justifies the ongoing string of distortions.
What undergirds this intentional avoidance that prevents even the introduction of personal
responsibility for one's own outcomes? Liberal orthodoxy California-style requires only
blame; and shuns any possible hint that one set their own fate in motion by their own
choices. This bleeding hear overkill is oppressive.
The cult of victimization - is it now found in 99% of our society? Please, November 3,
show me I am wrong. Of course, my mind set is distorted by living in California. Asking for
personal responsibility is thee quickest way to get canceled and censored on any local blog
out here.
I vaguely remember when personal responsibility was a fundamental tenant of American life.
It was certainly the hall mark of my own growing up in the 1950's. In California.: When did
this change so dramatically? Was it LBJ and The Great Society?
Who was it that said fate is what life hands you; destiny is what you do with it. Fate is
being born a certain race, in a certain neighborhood to certain parents, or lack of them.
Destiny is certainly what one chooses to do with that fate. And well evidenced by the recent
RNC testimonies. Bravo.
The gist of this article;
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/schiff-pelosi-livid-after-intel-community-ditches-manipulated-election-briefings-written
Seems to be the marriage of convenience between the democrats and the intelligence community
is starting to fray, as the lightbulb over the head of the intelligence people has turned on,
that sticking to the, "Hillary as the rightful one," narrative for the last four years was
too many eggs in one basket and now they will be throwing the democrats under the bus.
Anyone sensing similar?
Does the 1955 Alan Ginbsurg beat poem "HowL" have any relevance to what is going on today?
Does "Rebel Without a Cause" speak the same message - rage, undefined, diffuse generational
rage .....at something.
Howl
BY ALLEN GINSBERG
For Carl Solomon
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in
the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness
of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on
tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light
tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows
of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and
listening to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for
New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried
their torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,
incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward
poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the
rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon
and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king
light of mind,
who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on
benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked
and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,..........
(etc, etc, etc)
Pat..come on. Tweaking the Obamas, Clintons and me the Cone Head Family are other
subjects. I was addressing your inference that the Trump family is running the country in a
well and prosperous manner. Hardly. Running the country on an overnight 4 trillion dollar
plus credit card charge and dribbling out dixi cups Less Taxes Kool Aid is pushing the
standard definition of a well run prosperous country.
It is the Democrat congressional party that wants to spend more funny money than Trump and
you know very well that if it had not been for the carefully encouraged CODIV panic and
shutdown the country would be hugely prosperous and Trump would have clear sailing to
re-election. As I have said before, I am quite good at taking a Le Carre style back-azimuth.
There is an ops room somewhere running The Resistance, always has been and at the bottom of
that chamber pot are painted familiar faces.
written by daniel
mcadams wednesday august 26, 2020
It was one of the most notorious cases of 'cancel culture' gone crazy. A young high school
student was relentlessly bullied and character-assassinated by the mainstream media because he
wore a MAGA hat while a bully screamed in his face. Nicholas Sandmann turned the tables and
walked away with millions of dollars after suing the media outlets that slandered him. But is
"cancel culture" going away? Or is it getting more violent? Watch today's Liberty Report:
"... White Fragility is the kind of book that can be written in two months, read in two days, and forgotten in two hours, but Robin DiAngelo's text is also a deeply pernicious piece of work, utterly contemptuous of the "normie" ..."
"... Whites it aims to convert to a more radical form of racial self-abnegation than they currently demonstrate. In fact, the work is so hostile and ideologically loaded that it can't help but present a kind of dialectic, wherein certain truths are revealed in spite of itself. As such, I have to confess that I learned something from White Fragility , even if it isn't what DiAngelo had in mind. ..."
"... In short, White Fragility is a horrifying call for Whites not simply to be paralyzed by White guilt, but to become active participants in their decline, and willing accomplices in their political and demographic destruction. ..."
"... I think this is a beautiful indictment of the demonstrative and showy nature of White anti-racists who simply love to engage in social theatrics in search of kudos, approval, and incentives without really understanding the deeper destructive meaning of anything they're doing. ..."
"... DiAngelo has contempt for people like this because they place all their energies into grandstanding instead of helping in the transfer of real power and wealth. I have contempt for them because they place all their energies into grandstanding for short-term personal benefits while stabbing their ancestors, contemporaries, and progeny in the back. ..."
"... It's important to bear in mind that we're still in the same totalitarian state that whacked JFK ..."
"... The purpose of removing Confederate symbols is to hide the commanding Zionist involvement in the slave trade business. This is the equivalent of using the Russian Collusion to hide the Zionist influence on the Trump election. ..."
"... Why is Critical Race Theory presented as The Absolute Truth? Not only is it not the truth, it isn't even a theory. ..."
Robin DiAngelo White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism Beacon
Press, 2018.
I first encountered Robin DiAngelo three years ago, during my
investigation of the Jewish origins and intellectual currents of Whiteness Studies.
DiAngelo was then just another relatively minor speaker and academic on the
university/consulting network in Whiteness Studies, and I was undecided then, and remain
undecided, as to whether DiAngelo is wholly, in part, or not at all Jewish. She didn't feature
in my essay at all, and, when I looked over my old notes a few days ago, she appeared only as a
name scribbled in the margins. As it happens, her ancestry is relatively inconsequential in
light of the fact that White Fragility , published in 2018 but reaching bestseller
status in the aftermath of George Floyd's death, is heavily and transparently influenced by
Jewish thought and by Jewish pioneers in the field she now finds so conducive to fame and
fortune. I don't make a habit of buying the texts of the opposition, but when certain of them
reach a significant level of academic or popular attention (look for it in your child's school
curriculum), it's probably necessary for someone among us to carry out some form of
intellectual reconnaissance, and to bring back for wider consideration the most essential of
the gathered information. This was
my approach to Jean-Paul Sartre's widely-read and overly-praised Anti-Semite and Jew
, and so, when I heard DiAngelo had managed to make herself a bestselling author, I headed to
my local bookstore, where dozens of copies had been helpfully stacked on a table devoted to
"in-demand" literature on race and racism.
My first action on picking up a copy of White Fragility was to turn to the
bibliography. I knew what I'd see, and it was a gratifying and familiar feeling to see so many
names from my research on Whiteness Studies. They were almost all there, protruding from the
page like shunned relatives at a family reunion -- Noel Ignatiev, George Lipsitz, Ruth
Frankenberg (described in White Fragility as "a premier white scholar in the field of
whiteness studies"), Michelle Fine, Lois Weis, along with helpful co-ethnics like Thomas
Shapiro, David Wellman, Sander Gilman, Larry Adelman, and Jay Kaufman.
These are DiAngelo's
mentors and intellectual forbears, and I could tell, scanning through this list of names and
works, that White Fragility was sure to boast very many references to "fellow Whites,"
and streams of inducements to abandon White ethnic interests.
These expectations weren't
disappointed. White Fragility is the kind of book that can be written in two months,
read in two days, and forgotten in two hours, but Robin DiAngelo's text is also a deeply
pernicious piece of work, utterly contemptuous of the "normie"
Whites it aims to convert to a
more radical form of racial self-abnegation than they currently demonstrate. In fact, the work
is so hostile and ideologically loaded that it can't help but present a kind of dialectic,
wherein certain truths are revealed in spite of itself. As such, I have to confess that I
learned something from White Fragility , even if it isn't what DiAngelo had in mind.
What is White Fragility?
"White Fragility," as a theory, is confirmation of my belief that inducing guilt in Whites
was never the end goal in itself. It's never simply been about making us feel bad about
ourselves or our ancestors. White Fragility, White guilt, and indeed Whiteness Studies as a
whole, is fundamentally about power. Those of you familiar with the New Testament will recall
the verse from John's third chapter, wherein John the Baptist declares that Christ "must
increase, but I must diminish." Power and influence never simply disappear, but rather
transfer. John (and it is entirely inconsequential whether you regard him as historical or
fictional) was aware that as a popular local mystic or holy man, his mere continued presence
was an obstacle to the local growth in power of Christ, and so he made a conscious decision to
diminish himself. Likewise, we are living in an age where Whites continue to have some social,
political, and economic power, but where large and growing numbers of non-Whites are seeking to
obtain what remains of this power. For them to "increase," it has been declared that we must
diminish. Whiteness Studies is fundamentally about making us willing and enthusiastic
participants in our own decline. When Blacks or Jews demand a reduction of, or end to, White
power or wealth, it means that they want that power or wealth. Despite all sloganeering, there
can be no equality in power among races. Not now, not ever; only ruthless and unceasing
competition.
White guilt, in itself, is certainly an act of psychological diminishment, but the message
of DiAngelo's text is fundamentally that this psychological diminishment has not led to a
desired correlation in material or structural diminishment. Whites merely feeling sorry for
themselves isn't enough for their competitors, if it isn't accompanied by a wholesale transfer
of power, land, and other resources. In this context, "White Fragility" is an indictment and
insult levelled at White progressives merely frozen by fear of racism accusations and White
guilt. In short, White Fragility is a horrifying call for Whites not simply to be
paralyzed by White guilt, but to become active participants in their decline, and willing
accomplices in their political and demographic destruction.
DiAngelo's introduction begins with accusation. America "began with the attempted genocide
of Indigenous people and the theft of their land. American wealth was built on the labor of
kidnapped and enslaved Africans and their descendants." So far, so familiar. But the book very
quickly moves to an outline of the theory of White Fragility. I actually found this, and some
other chapters on the same theme, extremely interesting, because DiAngelo, and presumably other
Whiteness Studies activists, are keenly aware that Whites are peculiarly concerned with
morality and with appearing to be good people (all of which is very much in keeping with
the
arguments and research of Kevin MacDonald ). For example, DiAngelo writes on the fear White
progressives have of being perceived as racist: "We consider a challenge to our racial
worldview as a challenge to our very identities as good, moral people. Thus, we perceive any
attempt to connect us to the system of racism as an unsettling and unfair moral offence. One of
the greatest social fears for a white person is being told that we have said or done something
racially problematic."
Of course, the groundwork for the connections among White ethnocentrism
= Racism = Morally Bad were laid by Jewish academics over many decades. The problem for Jewish
activists and incentivized Whiteness Studies traitors is that this moral terror has resulted in
what they perceive to be paralysis and inaction.
Actual "racists" aren't really discussed in White Fragility , and where they are,
it's clear that they aren't the target of the title of the book. In fact, DiAngelo points out:
"Of course, some whites explicitly avow racism. We might consider these whites actually more
aware of, and honest about, their biases."
In other words, even if we're moral monsters in DiAngelo's eyes, we aren't "fragile." Again, because of the extremes of the some of the
dialectics here, certain truths emerge. DiAngelo remarks early in the book that "race matters,"
something that many of our readers would agree with, even if it's from a slightly different
angle than the author intends. She also argues that:
All humans have prejudice; we cannot avoid it. People who claim not to be prejudiced are
demonstrating a profound lack of self-awareness. Ironically, they are also demonstrating the
power of socialization -- we have all been taught in schools, through movies, and from family
members, teachers, and clergy that it is important not to be prejudiced. Everyone has
prejudice, and everyone discriminates.
I couldn't agree more: Whites have been uniquely affected by mass propaganda designed to
brainwash them into viewing as morally evil something that is natural and instinctive to all
humans.
The real targets of this book are White progressives who profess anti-racism, and because I
also possess many frustrations in relation to this demographic, I couldn't help but agree with
some of DiAngelo's characterizations. Take, for example, this gem:
I believe that white progressives cause the most daily damage to people of color. I define
a white progressive as any white person who thinks he or she is not racist, or is less
racist, or in the "choir," or already "gets it." White progressives can be the most difficult
for people of color because, to the degree that we think we have arrived, we will put our
energy into making sure that others see us having arrived. [emphasis added]
I think this is a beautiful indictment of the demonstrative and showy nature of White
anti-racists who simply love to engage in social theatrics in search of kudos, approval, and
incentives without really understanding the deeper destructive meaning of anything they're
doing.
DiAngelo has contempt for people like this because they place all their energies into
grandstanding instead of helping in the transfer of real power and wealth. I have contempt for
them because they place all their energies into grandstanding for short-term personal benefits
while stabbing their ancestors, contemporaries, and progeny in the back.
The book's first chapter, "The Challenges of Talking to White People About Race," is devoted
to convincing White progressives that they are in fact racist, and that they need to become
better allies in their own racial destruction. The message here is quasi-spiritual; Whites are
told that their quest for racial redemption will be lifelong, lasting until the day they die.
Their existence is an ontological problem, the only solution to which is an endless quest to
compensate for simply existing:
Interrupting the forces of racism is ongoing, lifelong work because the forces
conditioning us into racist frameworks are always at play; our learning will never be
finished.
I really wish more White moral grandstanders would understand that, ultimately, they will
never be given a "pass" by our enemies once they've accrued enough kudos, or groveled enough,
or displayed enough platform sympathy with Blacks, or any other ethnicity that happens to be
Victim of the Month. They will only ever be temporary tools, held in contempt as much for their
weakness as their whiteness.
Another interesting feature of the chapter is its attack on White individualism, presented
here as a myth that prevents Whites from taking collective responsibility for alleged
historical wrongs. For DiAngelo,
Individualism is a story line that creates, communicates, reproduces, and reinforces the
concept that each of us is a unique individual and that our group memberships, such as race,
class, or gender, are irrelevant.
DiAngelo's problem with White individualism is that it's a barrier to White guilt, and also
a barrier to Whites perceiving alleged advantages in employment and social advancement in a
society in which they enjoy a demographic majority. Again, due to the dialectic at play, I
happen to agree that individualism among Whites is a problem in certain contexts. It's just
that in my perspective it's a barrier to the explicit assertion of White ethnic interests and
collective action in pursuit of those interests. In fact, without widespread awareness of an
ethnic threat, it seems almost impossible to convince Whites to see themselves as a group and
to act as one. A further obstacle to White ethnocentrism is decades of social conditioning in
which Jewish propaganda is dominant. Even DiAngelo concedes that "reflecting on our racial
frames is particularly challenging for white people, because we are taught that to have a
racial viewpoint is to be biased." Unfortunately, DiAngelo doesn't ask who did the "teaching"
in this regard, and she certainly doesn't consider the broader implications of what she's
saying.
In the second chapter, "Racism and White Supremacy," DiAngelo trots out the "race is a
social construct" trope, with footnotes for her claims leading invariably to a section of
bibliography that reads like a Bar Mitzvah invitation list. Black academic Ibram Kendi is
quoted as arguing that "if we truly believe that all humans are equal, then disparity in
condition can only be the result of systemic discrimination." I agree, but I think the problem
isn't systemic discrimination but the belief that all humans are equal. Eliminate that belief
and disparity in condition is neither surprising nor subject matter for conspiratorial
conjecture. But alternative theories and beliefs like mine don't feature in DiAngelo's book,
which has the air of a religious text, and issues utterances with an authority that demands
faith rather than reason. There is an interesting section in the chapter denying that there can
be an anti-White racism, with DiAngelo remarking:
People of color may also hold prejudices and discriminate against white people, but they
lack the social and institutional power that transforms their prejudice and discrimination
into racism; the impact of their prejudice on whites is temporary and contextual.
Let's set aside that horrific last statement, and focus for a moment on the unstated premise
underlying the first. Isn't it more or less the stated goal of "Whiteness studies," White
guilt, the theory of "White Fragility," Black Lives Matter, and the massive power of
multicultural propaganda to lead to the further diminishment of White social and institutional
power? As stated at the outset of this review, this power is destined for the hands of ethnic
interlopers. We know full well which of these ethnic groups will take the lion's share of that
power, because they have their hands on most of it already. The question is therefore: why
should Whites hand what remains of their social and institutional power to hostile groups that
will unquestionably ensure that their prejudice is enacted on Whites in a way that is far from
"temporary and contextual"? What possible incentive could adequately convince Whites to sign up
to such a Devil's pact? Isn't the entirety of White guilt built on a psychotic and
media-induced fantasy -- the idea that if Whites would just give up all remaining power in
their hands the world would enter an age of racial peace and harmony? DiAngelo doesn't even
touch on areas like this, preferring instead to subject the reader to a steady stream of
meaningless gibberish, such as a lengthy rumination on the theories of Ruth Frankenberg who, we
are told, gave birth to such dazzling notions as "whiteness is multidimensional." DiAngelo then
caps the chapter by treating us to the heights of Jamaican philosophy, where one Charles W.
Mills advances a conspiracy theory titled "the racial contract" which involves:
A tacit and sometimes explicit agreement among members of the peoples of Europe to assert,
promote, and maintain the ideal of white supremacy in relation to all other people of the
world. It is the unnamed political system that has made the modern world what it is
today.
And there you have it -- this Jamaican genius has discovered the Protocols of the Elders
of Europa .
Charles W. Mills: A Caribbean Socrates
The same themes are repeated in the third chapter, "Racism After the Civil Rights Movement."
DiAngelo again attacks "fragile" Whites who claim to be color-blind, pointing out that they
merely believe that it's racist to acknowledge race and therefore flee into a denial of
reality. The only real novelty in the chapter, and one I found highly entertaining, was
DiAngelo's list of racist behaviors exhibited by fragile Whites. These include "acting nice"
and "being careful not to use racial terms or labels." But such phrasing is all the rage now,
as in the New York Times podcast series " Nice White
Parents " which explores hypocrisy among progressive Whites expressing all manner of
liberal pieties -- but moving heaven and earth to avoid sending their children to schools with
large numbers of POC.
The next chapter, "How Does Race Shape the Lives of White People?," is probably the
strangest of the book because, if DiAngelo is indeed White (and not someone with some Jewish
ancestry), then it represents a very disturbing and irrational detachment from reality and
common sense. For s start, DiAngelo seems to view even the mundane aspects of White ethnic
homogeneity as pathological. She writes:
As I move through my daily life, my race is unremarkable. I belong when I turn on the TV,
read best-selling novels, and watch blockbuster movies. I belong when I walk past the
magazine racks at the grocery store or drive past billboards. I belong when I see the
overwhelming number of white people on lists of the "Most Beautiful." I belong when I look at
my teachers, counsellors, and classmates. I belong when I learn about the history of my
country throughout the year and when I am shown its heroes and heroines -- George Washington,
Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Robert E. Lee, Amelia Earhart, Susan B. Anthony, John
Glenn, Sally Ride, and Louisa May Alcott
All of this is presented as negative and sinister, to which one can only ask: what is the
alternative? To hand over one's nation and territory to others, so that you can cease to
belong? What then? DiAngelo comments:
It is rare for me to experience a sense of not belonging racially, and these are usually
very temporary, easily avoidable situations. Indeed, throughout my life, I have been warned
that I should avoid situations in which I might be a racial minority. These situations are
often presented as scary, dangerous, or "sketchy."
I can't image why. What I do suggest is that in order to help clarify her theoretical
framework, Robin DiAngelo should, with all reasonable haste, relocate to an area in which she
is most certainly not going to belong racially. Since she views "un-belonging" with great
enthusiasm, while confessing she has no real experience on which to base this view, she should
find the Blackest of Black areas and spend some quality time there -- time that isn't
"temporary, easily avoidable." I think, in the course of such an experiment, she will truly,
honestly, encounter some helpful folks that will be only too glad to show her how fragile she
can be.
By far the most entertaining chapter of the book comes within the last 50 pages. Titled
"White Women's Tears," it's an indictment of that infamous sight -- bawling, wailing, and
normally overweight White women clutching themselves in feverish grief over the death of some
poor Black gangbanger who just happened to get shot while rushing a police officer. DiAngelo is
probably correct in asserting that this is a self-indulgent demonstrative act designed to
heighten status ("I'm moral, good, and empathetic") and get attention from men of all races
("I'm vulnerable right now, and need attention and resources"). Some of the anecdotes in this
regard, from DiAngelo's "Whiteness" seminars are priceless, normally involving some weak-minded
woman breaking down at the revelation she's "racist," and they went some way to compensating me
for the purchase price and hideous ideology of the book. Above all, they confirmed to be that
what we see unfold before us is both tragedy and farce, and that our situation is no less
dangerous for that:
A black man struggling to express a point referred to himself as stupid. My
co-facilitator, a black woman, gently countered that he was not stupid but that society would
have him believe that he was. As she was explaining the power of internalized racism, a white
woman interrupted with, "I think what he was trying to say was " When my co-facilitator
pointed out that the white woman had reinforced the racist idea that she could best speak for
a black man, the woman erupted in tears. The training came to a complete halt as most of the
room rushed to comfort her and angrily accused the black facilitator of unfairness.
Meanwhile, the black man she had spoken for was left alone to watch her receive comfort.
Conclusion
DiAngelo scathingly remarks on incidents like this that "when we are mired in guilt, we are
narcissistic and ineffective." Essentially, the new direction of Whiteness Studies and its
intellectual corollaries will be to wean Whites away from demonstrative habits of virtue
signaling and into active participation in racial decline. We can expect to see in the near
future (and we already to some extent have with the Black Lives Matter riots) a greater
emphasis on Whites becoming active "anti-racists." It will become increasingly difficult for
Whites to appear simply as "not racist." Active, enthusiastic activity on behalf of the ethnic
power-grab will be demanded, and anything less will be portrayed with disdain as "fragility."
DiAngelo concludes her book with the blunt assertion that "a positive white identity is an
impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the
system of white supremacy." White identity is therefore to be destroyed wholesale, and White
ethnic interests crushed alongside it. DiAngelo proclaims with all the vigor of the subversive
or the brainwashed that she will "strive for a less white identity, for my own liberation and
sense of justice."
Liberation and justice. These words were uttered a long time ago in France. The beheadings
started soon after.
It's important to bear in mind that we're still in the same totalitarian state that
whacked JFK and then published shitloads of wistful essays on what that says about "us," by bignosed perv John Updike, by fudge-packing toff Mick Jagger, after all, "it was you and me,"
and everybody in between. The pressure to take the blame for state predation is a constant of
state-imposed American culture. Fuck that shit.
So of course some apple-polishing Jew or wop academic is going to tell us that it's not
cops and prosecutors and prisons fucking jigs over, it's you and me. The proper response to
this is Go fuck yourself. It's not me shooting jigs, strangling them, torturing them, framing
them, and locking them up to work for ten cents a day. It's this state that fucks them over,
not me. All I'm ever gonna do for blacks is destroy and shitcan this kleptocratic police
state, which fucks me over too, just somewhat less.
The purpose of removing Confederate symbols is to hide the commanding Zionist involvement
in the slave trade business. This is the equivalent of using the Russian Collusion to hide the Zionist influence on the
Trump election.
"I don't make a habit of buying the texts of the opposition, but when certain of them
reach a significant level of academic or popular attention (look for it in your child's
school curriculum), it's probably necessary for someone among us to carry out some form of
intellectual reconnaissance, and to bring back for wider consideration the most essential of
the gathered information."
Thank you for doing so. I myself have occasionally struggled with this same issue, i.e.,
the need to finance such people in order to access their material in full for the purpose of
a crafting a more fully informed critique of their ideas.
Robin DiAngelo has obviously rehearsed in her mind and put in book form the black
ass-kissing she'd launch into if she somehow found herself, say, getting on the wrong subway
in NY and having to get off in Harlem where the blacks mind-read her hatred and smell her
fear. It's her version of Monsters From the Id , or about overcoming–not white
European relations with their fellow black Americans–but her psychotic Jewish paranoia
over blacks one day recognizing how they've been played for fools by Jews like her and, with
eyes darting left and right a mile a minute, wheedling her way out of being given the South
African ritual by a gang of blacks with machetes. What a pathetic and paranoid little woman.
But for the Jewish MSM and publishing monopoly she'd have no more public existence than the
imaginary black boogeymen tormenting her psyche. Oy vey, the book's so clever and shmart that
she and her promoters didn't imagine blacks are intelligent enough to see this outrageous
insult of them not as a reflection on their relations with white Europeans, but as just more
condescending manipulation by the Jews.
My first action on picking up a copy of White Fragility was to turn to the bibliography.
I knew what I'd see, and it was a gratifying and familiar feeling to see so many names from
my research on Whiteness Studies. They were almost all there, protruding from the page like
shunned relatives at a family reunion -- Noel Ignatiev
.. heavily and transparently influenced by Jewish thought and by Jewish pioneers in the
field she now finds so conducive to fame and fortune.
These are DiAngelo's mentors and intellectual forbears ..
The abolitionists of the 19th c. were passionate, energetic people whose relentless
agitation was a huge annoyance to political elites including Lincoln. The abolitionists were
nearly exclusively white, Enlightenment progressives, Christian or post-Christian. They bore
costs and took risks to set up and run the underground railroad. They are the pioneers, and
their efforts had a far more significant bearing on the future of USA race relations than the
1960's and later black and Jewish activists.
The author knows this, and omits it, thereby commiting a vile act of revisionism.
I you have a problem giving money to these people – and I certainly do myself and
wish to discourage others from doing so too – you can simply get the book from a
library, either public, or online via Library Genesis (which should cover most popular new
book needs and more besides – certainly I've found all the recently recommended
anti-white propaganda texts there).
I keep telling you people that White Chad Envy drives this effort to discredit America's
founders, especially the ones who owned slaves. It took a high-testosterone badass to enslave
Negroes and make them productive on his farm, and the white men who pulled this off had no
trouble finding white women who wanted to marry them and bear their children. Young single
and widowed white women in the British Isles and mainland European countries would even cross
the Atlantic on their own initiative to find these men to marry, sight unseen, despite the
notion that women in the era before female emancipation faced restrictions on their agency.
And despite the modern nonsense that white women show "empathy" with the "oppressed," when
they side with and select sexually the ones doing the "oppressing."
Those white men put today's soft, fear-ridden, risk-averse, often women-repelling white
American men to shame. Nothing about their record suggests "fragility" in the least.
Do black women cry as much as white women do? I was thinking about this in regards to the
quote about a white woman being comforted for crying, and I realized that I cannot recall
ever hearing black men complain about how much women cry.
Many of the abolitionists wanted to end slavery as a necessary first step in removing
Negroes from the country. They didn't necessarily want free Negroes hanging around after
their emancipation.
@Anonymous
Thanks for the link, I'd have missed it.
Delighted that this termite died in pain:
What killed Ignatiev, an intestinal blockage, is perfect justice and proves that God
does indeed have a sense of humor.
Interesting coincidence that he worked steel, at least in part, the same time I did. Not
in the same place, but my guess is he found blowing hot air at the Ivy League a lot more
profitable.
Connections! Fellow fragiles, we got to work on that. No way a mere white guy could have
pulled that off, not then, not ever.
Why buy a text and – through this voluntary act – sponsor the author and
his/her (almost certainly) jewish agent and publisher?
If you have the urge to read the poison of the enemy (I don't, since everything they write
is so predictable and thus boring, and new depths of depravity and dishonesty can easily be
noticed, if you are half-aware on sites like these), obtain it through other means.
I have read several good summaries/criticisms of White Fragility lately. Even
though current events led me down a path of exploring some pretty racist ideas, it all just
seems like a taboo more than anything. One of the last taboos in our culture the power to
really rile people up (mostly young white women who seem to be terrified of black men but
don't like to admit it). I am old enough to remember when being "gay" was still a taboo,
where people wouldn't just come out and admit they were gay. And then I have witnessed to
complete transformation of that taboo into a socially accepted, celebrated part of life. I am
also old enough to remember when someone having a black boyfriend would have been hilarious
and weird.
With race, there are a lot of intellectual tricks being played on people. For one thing, I
grew up when almost everyone in America was white. Since almost everyone was white, and
advertising was designed to appeal to people in demographically correct ways, I was subjected
to millions and millions of repetitions of white people in Ads buying things, to the point of
naturally coming to see white people as occupying certain positions in the capitalist
framework. Whiteness wasn't the primary aim of that repetitive advertising but the
expectation to see a white person in a certain way emerged naturally because I am white and
the ads were targeted to influence me. So now when I see ads where everyone is
demographically switched around, where, for example, a black woman is a car mechanic and
white guy is a mom, etc etc it's jarring. It's intentionally jarring. It's like they don't
want me to see the product or service being advertised but rather they want me to have an
experience of cognitive dissonance. But then I realize I am not the target of that ad at
all.
Which brings me to my point
Minimize your engagement with media and you will find that almost all of these topics
evaporate into thin air. News shows especially. With America's demographics changing,
everyone in the media and politics is scrambling to create content that is relevant to new
demographics, i.e. not you. So it all seems weird and jarring. If you just turn it off,
because it's not relevant to you anyway, you will find that you actually couldn't care less
if the hiring committee of some college a thousand miles away is trying to recruit a
wheel-chair bound Hispanic transgendered person for diversity and stuff like that.
We are also seeing the last gasp of these super conservative geezers who used to dominate
America as businessmen and local government Elks Club types where they would never hire a
long-haired guy with tattoos to do any kind of job, let alone a black person. These
last-gaspers still have a lot of money and influence in conservative media because they are
basically just sitting at home watching daytime tv or listening to Sirius XM all day.
So, racism is a taboo. Fine. I enjoy that taboo sometimes. Who really cares? Practically
no one outside of media, where people are hyping up this issue to get clicks and capture
attention. In real life almost no one I know really cares about any of this stuff.
The internet has birthed this ghoul and now it has a life in your mind. Just tune out. You
give it power by continuing to feed the frenzy online.
Yes, Richard B, D'Angelo's manipulation technique is closely related to the "Verbal Judo"
method taught to asshole cops: while coercing a citizen, obtrude random verbal chaff implying
options or choice to make the citizen internalize submission. Asshole cops take these methods
home to abuse their battered wives and fucked-up kids.
And yes, exactly, just like our asshole police awfisser, soon our asshole police state is
going to go home and take some stolen percocets and eat a gun. Good. Fuck the USA. Its
predation on blacks (and browns and whites) has got nothing to do with me.
Her point is well taken that "white supremacy" is not simply about white vs black but "it
is also the small number of rich whites over the much larger number of poor and working class
whites. In return for a guarantee that the latter group of whites will suffer the many
calamities of life afflicting working people in a capitalist society less intensely and less
frequently than do black people and people of color, the poor and working class whites will
not challenge the rule of the rich."
"White Fragility," as a theory, is confirmation of my belief that inducing guilt in
Whites was never the end goal in itself. It's never simply been about making us feel bad
about ourselves or our ancestors. White Fragility, White guilt, and indeed Whiteness
Studies as a whole, is fundamentally about power.
This quote is the heart of yet another great essay from Andrew Joyce.
Regarding The PQ – Power Question, not only does Jewish Supremacy Inc. (JSI) and its
Proxies demand to be,
but they have the power to effectuate those insane demands.
Thereby invalidating their claims about White power.
Worse, since Whites as a race have never once made those same demands, JSI also
invalidates their claims that the exercise of White power has been unjust.
DiAngelo's book isn't a courageous, honest, and intelligent search for the truth.
It's a cowardly, dishonest and unintelligent demand for power.
It's just another deposit of The Slave Revolt In Moralty.
JSI is simply too Hoax Dependent and Scapegoat-Driven to ever be able to exercise the
power they demand, and for the most part have, in a way that demonstrates a responsible
commitment to reality.
In other words, JSI represents the greatest danger, not just to Whites, but to humanity
itself.
That's why they're now declaring self-defense to be an act of terrorism.
For this reason and many others
Treason Against Jewish Supremacy Is Loyalty To Humanity
@advancedatheist
narrowly escaped lynching on Boston Common. For all the noise their leaders made,
Abolitionism was never more than a politically impotent lunatic fringe movement. But its
isolated firebrands provided a convenient imaginary enemy, like today's "terrorists", to
suppress dissent and command obedience in a white southern population that was growing
increasingly restive under the aristocratic rule of the slaveholding elite. It's one of the
great ironies of our history that the radicals so masterfully capitalized on the patriotic
rage that followed the insurgent attack on Old Glory at Sumter to push their agenda through
Congress and into law.
@anon
mention of the grim statistics of Black-on-Black violence. It doesn't fit The Narrative, you
see.
The government exists to truly make everyone equal. Does this man have only one leg? Then
we'll cut the leg off the man who has two. If we can't give a leg to the one-legged man, at
least then both men are equal. Silly, yes. But isn't this, in a nutshell, the ideology of the
current elite? Are some people too stupid to pass various types of qualification tests? Why,
then we'll just lower the bar until anybody, even a snake, can step over it! Or better yet,
just abolish the pretense of objective standards entirely and be done with it.
Andrew Joyce pens another penetrating article. Overrated and privileged snowflakes like
Robin DiAngelo deserve to be downgraded. Odious skunks such as Noel Ignatiev deserve to be
repudiated and disgraced. This article gets us moving in the proper direction. Thank you,
Andrew Joyce!
I learned from countless "I'm OK, You're OK" boomers that there's a wonderful feeling of
liberation and release from acknowledging and accepting your feelings and exorcising the
guilt for being who you are.
And you know, they were right. Countless white folks right now are at the point where they
can (at least privately) say "well, OK, so I am racist" and discover that they are still
perfectly good people. Or even make them realize that being regarded as a "bad person" frees
them to consider a lot of previously forbidden possibilities to reclaim their self-worth and
agency.
Books like this will actually help some people see the choice that is being forced on
them, and choose an alternative to the proffered solution.
After all, we made it through years of Prohibition only to realize that alcohol need not
be either illegal or immoral, if you're not. And drinking is far less natural to humans than
racism.
I would like to explain to Professor West a few things about this dread supremacy:
We have White Supremacy, Professor, because for 2500 years we, whites, have produced the
best minds on the planet, the greatest flourishing of the arts and sciences ever seen, the
most complex and organized societies. We have White Supremacy, whatever exactly it may be,
because we have been the earth's most successful race. No other has come close. Deal with
it.
We put probes on Mars and invented the thousands of technologies needed to do it. We
developed the symphony orchestra, the highest form of musical expression. We invented the
airplane, the computer, the internet, and tennis shoes. Putting it compactly, we invented the
modern world. A degree of privilege, however you may conceive it, goes with the
territory.
Blacks may not have the background to grasp the extent of our achievements. Still, permit
me a brief and very incomplete list of things white people have done or invented:
Euclidean geometry. Parabolic geometry. Hyperbolic geometry. Projective geometry.
Differential geometry. Calculus: Limits, continuity, differentiation, integration. Physical
chemistry. Organic chemistry. Biochemistry. Classical mechanics. The indeterminacy principle.
The wave equation. The Parthenon. The Anabasis. Air conditioning. Number theory. Romanesque
architecture. Gothic architecture. Information theory. Entropy. Enthalpy. Every symphony ever
written. Pierre Auguste Renoir. The twelve-tone scale. The mathematics behind it, twelfth
root of two and all that. S-p hybrid bonding orbitals. The Bohr-Sommerfeld atom. The
purine-pyrimidine structure of the DNA ladder. Single-sideband radio. All other radio.
Dentistry. The internal-combustion engine. Turbojets. Turbofans. Doppler beam-sharpening.
Penicillin. Airplanes. Surgery. The mammogram. The Pill. The condom. Polio vaccine. The
integrated circuit. The computer. Football. Computational fluid dynamics. Tensors. The
Constitution. Euripides, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Homer, Hesiod. Glass. Rubber.
Nylon. Roads. Buildings. Elvis. Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors. (OK, that's nerve gas, and
maybe we didn't really need it.) Silicone. The automobile. Really weird stuff, like
clathrates, Buckyballs, and rotaxanes. The Bible. Bug spray. Diffie-Hellman, public-key
cryptography, and RSA. Et cetera.
As a race, Cornel, we are happy for you, for anyone, to enjoy the benefits of our
civilization, but that is exactly what it is–our civilization. It has become a global
civilization because others among the competent–again, Chinese, Japanese, Indians,
Koreans–have found it to be in technical matters superior. It came from us. They, I
note, do not complain of White Supremacy or White Privilege. They are too busy making
computers and money.
Now, Cornel, I have often heard blacks demanding reparations for slavery. All right. I
agree. It is only fair. I will pay a half-million dollars to each of my slaves, and free them
immediately. I am not sure how many I have, but will try to give you an estimate in even
dozens. Further, I believe that all blacks are entitled to a similar amount for every year in
which they were slaves.
However, I think you owe us royalties for the use of our civilization, which can be
regarded as a sort of software. There should be a licensing fee. After all, every time you
use a computer, or a door knob, you are using something invented by us. Every time you
sharpen a pencil, or use one, or read or write, you infringe our copyright, so to speak. We
have spent millennia coming up with things–literacy, soap, counting–and it is
only fair that we receive recompense.
@Anon
of blackest cities in the Western World, so your theory is wrong.
But I agree you are submitting to peer pressure to adopt a certain point of view that you
call "anti-racist". Like how people used to go to Church and meet their their girlfriends,
it's pure lip service to the ideology. People conform outwardly and rebel inwardly. That's
always true of totalitarian systems of thought. The idea that everyone is going to keep
putting up with indulging these boring conversations about black people is absurd. Eventually
people get tired of playing along.
Thank you for reminding me to ignore Anon comments.
Amusing to see that the leftists understand it backwards. The poor whites unionise and try
to wrest better conditions from the rich whereas the blacks, the hispanics and other
immigrants sabotage them by accepting to work for worse conditions. Their refusal to join the
white unions or to create their own racialised unions and cooperating with white unions harms
the working class enormously.
I found highly entertaining, was DiAngelo's list of racist behaviors exhibited by
fragile Whites. These include "acting nice" and "being careful not to use racial terms or
labels."
According to the endarkened academic not using racial terms and acting nice is a symptom
of racism. But acting nasty towards coloured people and using slurs is also a symptom of
racism. So whites have no means of not being racist. What can they do then ? Logically they
should embrace the inner racist and establish a form of apartheid
The propaganda spewed by the endarkened academic is nothing new. 15 years ago some French
feminist journalist stated that men who fuck women of a different race are racist because
they assert their domination over that race through the bodies of the women. A few lines
further she stated that men who fuck white women only are racist because they remain closed
to the richness of experience brought by coloured women. Amen. Embrace the inner racist that
the woke believe lurks in you.
"... Among Americans without a high school diploma, for example, 27 percent self-censor. Among Americans who completed high school, this goes up to 34 percent. And among those who have attended college for at least a few years, 45 percent do. This suggests that Americans are socialized into learning to keep their mouth shut: the longer you spend in the educational system, the more you learn that it is appropriate to express some views, but not others. ..."
"... The implicit claim is that the good people, or at least the people with good taste and good manners, will abuse the bad people out of power is the social media version of "The King's advisors are corrupt!" The political "analysis" which reduces everything to the personal malice of your enemies and their conspiracies and all we need to do is the same politics that says all we need is good Christian leaders, except the morally trivial difference of who "we" are deemed to be. ..."
"... using the immoral methods you advocate is actively immoral in itself. Like Heinlein in Starship Troopers arguing that the whipping post was actually fairer, you're arguing the social media equivalent of pillory and stocks are fairer! ..."
"... reducing the whole issue of the current reliance on moral scandals about individuals in lieu of any principled politics to nothing more than the personal pique of the privileged (who alleged power is as likely to be imaginary as real, incidentally,) by waving away the problems, this is exactly what you are endorsing. ..."
I am sure that people restricting what they say because of a fear of ostracism is a thing
that happens, but there's no reason to suppose that this is restricted to liberals, or more
common among liberals
@147; @150: There is, apparently, some
recent data on
this. According to a survey conducted in 2019, a full 40% of Americans "don't feel free to
speak their minds." (The corresponding figures were 48% in 2015, and 13% in 1954, at the height
of McCarthyism. There are no figures for 2020.) Other relevant findings from that study: equal
numbers of R and D voters feel unable to speak their minds; but uneasiness about speaking
freely correlates most strongly with higher levels of education:
Among Americans without a high school diploma, for example, 27 percent self-censor.
Among Americans who completed high school, this goes up to 34 percent. And among those who
have attended college for at least a few years, 45 percent do. This suggests that Americans
are socialized into learning to keep their mouth shut: the longer you spend in the
educational system, the more you learn that it is appropriate to express some views, but not
others.
This finding (if valid) would seem to vindicate the functionalist interpretation of
self-censorship laid out by @150: that its purpose is to control the range of expression
permissible within the college-educated, broadly liberal PMC.
The figure in the Persuasion piece suggests that it's based on a longer paper. If
it's
this one , then it's still a preprint. But, still: at least something to go on.
I see this kind of thing multiple times every day. I suppose because these reviewers
haven't yet been shot and killed, this isn't really "cancel culture," not serious, I'm making
it up.
There is some strenuous gaslighting going on in this thread.
Jerry [email protected] wrote: "I'm sorry, I genuinely do not understand what you mean to say
here."
How curious Well then, to be blunt, defending "dragged on Twitter" is defending a storm of
abuse as useful political speech, which is ridiculous. It's defending the storm of abuse by
gamers of women, for one thing. Pretending it's not because those kind of people only want to
pretend this kind of rotten politics is only a problem when people they perceive as "left" do
it, doesn't change that. The same tactics used by the right too, for example, demonize Hilary
Clinton for thirty years may not be called PC or cancel culture, but that's what it is.
The implicit claim is that the good people, or at least the people with good taste and
good manners, will abuse the bad people out of power is the social media version of "The
King's advisors are corrupt!" The political "analysis" which reduces everything to the
personal malice of your enemies and their conspiracies and all we need to do is the same
politics that says all we need is good Christian leaders, except the morally trivial
difference of who "we" are deemed to be.
Moral reformation by abuse is not going to work. Frankly, the actual irrelevance of this
to ownership of the country is one reason why it is allowed, a way to neuter real opposition.
It prevents solidarity between the lowers, while fostering illusions about select masters.
Wasn't there some guy who actually wrote about the Obama presidency under the title We Were
Eight Years in Power?
And, by the way, if politics were simply just personal morality, then using the
immoral methods you advocate is actively immoral in itself. Like Heinlein in Starship
Troopers arguing that the whipping post was actually fairer, you're arguing the social media
equivalent of pillory and stocks are fairer!
You think for some reason stuff like some guy pulling a Norwegian flag because somebody
complained about a Confederate flag being displayed isn't a problem? Even worse, you really
think pulling Confederate flags is a real solution to anything? You think a judge who ruled
that Ashley Judd could sue Harvey Weinstein for retaliation and defamation (as in
blacklisting her,) but couldn't sue him for employer harassment when she wasn't his employee
should be purged from the judiciary? And that of course a judge should rule that Judd should
be able to sue him for employer abuse when she wasn't employed by him because that will allow
fishing expeditions into every employee's work history? You think the movie An Office and A
Spy should be canceled but that doesn't make you an anti-Dreyfusard?
Probably the pretense is that none of this was intended. But reducing the whole issue
of the current reliance on moral scandals about individuals in lieu of any principled
politics to nothing more than the personal pique of the privileged (who alleged power is as
likely to be imaginary as real, incidentally,) by waving away the problems, this is exactly
what you are endorsing.
"... You're not allowed to criticise it. And therefore, if you offer even a fairly mild criticism, it really does sound strident, because it violates this expectation that religion is out of bounds. ..."
Parental reports (on social media) of friend clusters exhibiting signs of gender dysphoria [1-4]
and increased exposure to social media/internet preceding a child’s announcement of a trans-
gender identity [1-2,9] raise the possibility of social and peer influences. In developmental psy-
chology research, impacts of peers and other social influences on an individual’s development
are sometimes described using the terms peer contagion and social contagion, respectively. The
use of "contagion" in this context is distinct from the term’s use in the study of infectious dis-
ease, and furthermore its use as an established academic concept throughout this article is not
meant in any way to characterize the developmental process, outcome, or behavior as a disease
or disease-like state, or to convey any value judgement. Social contagion [29] is the spread of
affect or behaviors through a population. Peer contagion, in particular, is the process where an
individual and peer mutually influence each other in a way that promotes emotions and behav-
iors that can potentially have negative effects on their development [30]. Peer contagion has
been associated with depressive symptoms, disordered eating, aggression, bullying, and drug
use [30-31]. Internalizing symptoms such as depression can be spread via the mechanisms of
co-rumination, which entails the repetitive discussion of problems, excessive reassurance seek-
ing (ERS), and negative feedback [30, 32-34]. Deviancy training, which was first described for
rule breaking, delinquency, and aggression, is the process whereby attitudes and behaviors asso-
ciated with problem behaviors are promoted with positive reinforcement by peers [35,36].
Peer contagion has been shown to be a factor in several aspects of eating disorders. There
are examples in the eating disorder and anorexia nervosa literature of how both internalizing
symptoms and behaviors have been shared and spread via peer influences [37-41] which may
have relevance to considerations of a rapid onset of gender dysphoria occurring in AY As.
Friendship cliques can set the norms for preoccupation with one’s body, one’s body image,
I posted the following tweet citing the well-known "social contagion" hypothesis forwarded
by Dr Lisa Littman's work on ROGD. This first person account by @SwipeWright of his academic cancelling is worth paying
attention to.
Reputational smears, job market sabotage, lies, etc. Brutal. Follow him for
thoughtful insights and smart analysis of scientific subjects. Unroll available on Thread
Reader
Directly getting people fired for their heterodox views.
Getting other academics to stay silent &/or avoid certain questions/topics out of
fear.
Causing heterodox students to avoid going into academia altogether.
As the following quote suggests that "woke ideology" is a secular religion"
"Yes, yes, I know," Dawkins interrupts. "I know. People say I'm shrill and
strident."
Dawkins has a theory about this, which is very persuasive.
"We've all been
brought up with the view that religion has some kind of special privileged
status. You're not allowed to criticise it. And therefore, if you offer even a
fairly mild criticism, it really does sound strident, because it violates this
expectation that religion is out of bounds."
I see this kind of thing multiple times every day. I suppose because these reviewers
haven't yet been shot and killed, this isn't really "cancel culture," not serious, I'm making
it up.
There is some strenuous gaslighting going on in this thread.
The Natalie Wynn transcript is very good, and I hadn't seen that before. Thank you.
It's worth wrestling with a bit, because it has the advantage of not framing the
question in terms of Free Speech. I think that the free speech framing often pushes people to
draw bright lines that confuse rather than clarify the debate. For example, various
statements that I've seen by Yascha Monk he tries to make a clear distinction between, "being
dragged on twitter" (which is not a free speech concern, in his opinion) and suffering
employment consequences. But that's a difficult distinction to maintain, and Natalie Wynn is,
correctly, concerned about to problems of being harassed on twitter.
I read her essay as being less about, "see how this suppresses speech" and more about,
"look at the way in which twitter encourages/amplifies/leans towards" bad arguments. That
people are engaging in speech but are doing it badly because they are being lazy or careless,
or just not inclined to see the people they're arguing with as persons.
Take these two passages (which I'm quoting in reverse order from which they appear in the
original).
I recently read a book by Sarah Schulman called Conflict is Not Abuse: Overstating
Harm, Community Responsibility and the Duty of Repair. Basically Schulman's argument is
that, in various contexts from romantic relationships to community infighting to
international politics, the overstatement of harm is used as a justification for cruelty
and for escalating conflict.
"Just look at the case of Denise Young Smith. Young Smith spent almost two decades working
her way up in Apple, becoming one of the few black people to ever reach its executive team.
She was named vice president of diversity and inclusion
Then she uttered the sentence that really got her into trouble: "And I've often told
people a story -- there can be 12 white blue-eyed blond men in a room and they are going to
be diverse too because they're going to bring a different life experience and life
perspective to the conversation," she noted.
Within a week, the uproar over her comments forced Young Smith to write an apology. A few
weeks later, her departure from the company was announced. She was replaced by Christie
Smith, a white woman."
Every day, many times a day. As far as I am concerned. Cancel culture is the overall
environment, the habitus, the totality of 2010+ media and communication. We all can get
ostracized and isolated at any time.
Like PC, the term cancel culture is an effort by right-wingers to re-brand their own
practices as something horrible when they are on the receiving end. As such, if cancel
culture were honestly applied what they do, some of us would agree that it is a bad thing.
Notably, everyone who has indignantly invoked their private property rights to delete
comments, shriek about trolls, ban commenters or even refuse comments, has agreed, whether or
not they concede the point, has agreed there is an active harm from it, even when it isn't
rape/death threats to women.
The real problem is not just that things like presumption of guilt, guilt by association,
etc. aren't moral. The real problem is they can't possibly do the job alleged. Causing mental
agony to people, even "bad" people, isn't political reform. Not only is this kind of thing a
diversion from politics, it is totally amenable to misuse, and everybody knows it. Making
excuses for Biden while harping about Trump is hypocritical gossip, partisanship, not
principle. Bill Cosby's accomplices got away scot free and Harvey Weinstein's stooges still
have their cheating Oscars! I suppose one of the biggest triumphs of cancel culture is
suppressing movies like the Gore Vidal biopic and the movie An Officer and a Spy. But what
kinds of victories is joining the anti-Dreyfusards?
To put it another way, cancel culture is the social media equivalent of the
criticism/self-criticism sessions on campuses in the Cultural Revolution. Except today's
version lacks any changes in party/state personnel, lacks any significant redirection of
resources to the people left behind, lacks any hint of fundamental political differences in
the future of the country. This current iteration of this kind of "politics" is even more apt
to disguise score settling or even puritanism. As near as I can tell, there isn't even a
strong case to be made that "puritanism" as such was helpful even to the Puritan revolution,
not like congregations paying their pastors.
And I don't think the pleasure of getting "our" own back on the reactionaries is enough to
pay for giving up any moral condemnation of the injustice of such methods, any more than
building clinics in the countryside in China was helped by criticism/self-criticism
sessions.
For those who favor cancel culture, here's a defense, in the particular case of
Aristotle: http://moufawad-paul.blogspot.com/2020/07/apparently-aristotle-is-in-danger-of.html
There are a couple of funny things to this, notably the fact that Aristotle is already
canceled as far as popular culture goes. For the SF fans here, consider Neal Stephenson's
abuse of "Aristotle" in Anathem. Or the nearly universal assumption in popular discourse that
Aristotle was an enemy of science. (See The Lagoon.)
Also, despite being a professional, our Maoist friend seems to think Aristotle was a major
philosopher in ancient times, when as near as I can tell from reading Peter Adamson is that
Aristotle's preeminence was a product of Arab/Persian/Central Asian culture, and hence not
really a white thing at all. (And Black Athena, while documenting influence from Egypt, is
incomplete, neglecting the cultural influences on the Greek cities of Ionia, which were more
important originally than Athens.)
I may have missed something after a cursory reading of the thread, but neither Chris B.
nor any of the commenters have attempted to place strict definitional boundaries on "cancel
culture" in order to make the debate more manageable. So not surprisingly we get a bunch of
commenters who object to hypothetical extreme examples of the tendency that "cancel culture"
is only a narrow subset of.
Some examples of the general tendency that I and most civilized people vehemently
oppose:
–Damnatio memoriae (ancient Rome) and un-personhood (communist countries).
–Firing for political opinions held outside of the workplace.
–Hiring blacklisting based on political opinion.
–Death threats and other threats of violence against people with objectionable
opinions. (Of course, if the objectionable individual was the first to issue such threats,
then it is fully justified to issue retaliatory threats, action movie-style).
–Legalized segregation or physical exile targeting people with objectionable
opinions.
–Last, definitely not least and most obviously, the actual genocide of groups
based solely on their political opinions or actions (The legalized killing of individuals
based on their actions is another matter).
These are what the critics of cancel culture such as Sebastian H seem to have in mind. But
either they are projecting their own fears or they are dishonestly using straw men. What
we've seen of "cancel culture" in the U.S. so far is:
–Attempts in public education to re-write false history, the Lost Cause most
prominently.
–Pulling down statues and other memorials of people who should not have been "sainted"
in the first place.
–Renaming of places/institutions named after either people who are very far from
sainthood (e.g. Bragg and Hood of CSA Army infamy) or objectionable nicknames.
–Calls for boycotts of commercial products or franchises whose CEOs voice
anti-democratic cultural or political opinions (e.g. ChickFila and homophobia).
–Along the same lines, the refusal to grant media platforms and public speaking
engagements to individuals with such opinions.
–Refusal to allow blog comments from people with a past history of objectionable
opinions (e.g., Chris B. rightly keeping Ralph Musgrave away from this comment thread).**
–Social ostracism that is either absolute (refusal to be physically near an
objectionable person, especially if such a person has made inflammatory public comments) or
more conditional (same refusal, but with the precondition that said person refused to be
respectful or to consider other opinions in previous debate).
Natalie Wynn also refers to Jo Freeman's 1976 piece on "Trashing," in which she describes
her experience of being ostracized by fellow feminists for alleged ideological deviation. The
dynamic of cancellation predates the internet.
(I don't know where a young you-tuber probably not born before the millennium encountered
Shulamith Firestone's old partner in crime, but I am delighted that she did! I know it shows my
age, but I think that young activists today could benefit a lot from reading what my
generation's activists wrote. Also, from getting off my lawn.)
This is a shadow of USSR over the USA. Dead are biting from the grave.
Notable quotes:
"... Over the course of the period from the heyday of McCarthyism to the present, the percentage of the American people not feeling free to express their views has tripled. In 2019, fully four in ten Americans engaged in self-censorship. Our analyses of both over-time and cross-sectional variability provide several insights into why people keep their mouths shut. We find that: ..."
"... those possessing more resources (e.g., higher levels of education) report engaging in more self-censorship ..."
"... fully 40% of the American people today reported being less free to speak their minds than they used to. That so many Americans withhold their political views is remarkable -- and portentous. ..."
"... Self-censorship is defined as intentionally and voluntarily withholding information from others in [the] absence of formal obstacles ..."
Over the course of the period from the heyday of McCarthyism to the present, the
percentage of the American people not feeling free to express their views has tripled. In 2019,
fully four in ten Americans engaged in self-censorship. Our analyses of both over-time and
cross-sectional variability provide several insights into why people keep their mouths shut. We
find that:
(1) Levels of self-censorship are related to affective polarization among the mass public,
but not via an "echo chamber" effect because greater polarization is associated with more
self-censorship.
(2) Levels of mass political intolerance bear no relationship to self-censorship, either at
the macro- or micro-levels.
(3) Those who perceive a more repressive government are only slightly more likely to engage
in self-censorship. And
(4) those possessing more resources (e.g., higher levels of education) report engaging
in more self-censorship .
Together, these findings suggest the conclusion that one's larger macro-environment has
little to do with self-censorship. Instead, micro-environment sentiments -- such as worrying
that expressing unpopular views will isolate and alienate people from their friends, family,
and neighbors -- seem to drive self-censorship.
We conclude with a brief discussion of the significance of our findings for larger democracy
theory and practice. Electronic copy available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3647099
There can be little doubt that Americans today are deeply divided on their values, many
issue preferences, and their ideological and partisan attachments (e.g., Druckman and
Levendusky 2019). Indeed, these divisions even extend to the question of whom -- or what kind
of person -- their children should marry (Iyengar et al. 2019)!
A concomitant of these divisions is that political discourse has become coarse, abrasive,
divisive, and intense. When it comes to politics today, it is increasingly likely that even an
innocent but misspoken opinion will cause a kerfuffle to break out.
It therefore should not be surprising to find that a large segment of the American people
engages in self-censorship when it comes of expressing their views.1 In a nationally
representative survey we conducted in 2019 (see Appendix A), we asked a question about
self-censorship that Samuel Stouffer (1955) first asked in 1954, with startling results:
fully 40% of the American people today reported being less free to speak their minds than
they used to. That so many Americans withhold their political views is remarkable -- and
portentous.
... ... ...
===
1 Sharvit et al. put forth a useful definition of self-censorship (2018, 331): "
Self-censorship is defined as intentionally and voluntarily withholding information from
others in [the] absence of formal obstacles ." Studies of self-censorship have taken many
forms, ranging from philosophical inquiries (e.g., Festenstein 2018) to studies of those
withholding crucial evidence of human rights abuses (e.g., Bar-Tal 2017) to studies of
self-censorship among racial minorities (e.g., Gibson 2012).
I 1000% recommend that Natalie Wynn link. It is an excellent discussion of the queer
facebook/twitter/social media cancel culture that I see all the time. The discussion of the
step to abstraction plus essentialism is especially good and totally applicable to most of the
real cancelations (the step from 'here is research about violent vs. non-violent protests' to
'Shor is racist' is a classic).
I'm going to provide a lot of examples and I'll use the Wynn tropes. Not all of them have
all of the tropes, but I think it is a true cultural issue, so I'm not sure you need all of
them at the same time. One that I won't mention every time is the Transitive Property of
Cancellation. But you should realize that it exists in every case where someone does something
off the job, and the cancelers try to get them fired, because the logic is "your company is
horribly tainted by have X as a worker". There are a few cases using words that are forbidden.
I'm not going to type them outright only because I don't want to get dragged into the
discussion of the appropriateness of using them directly when discussing them, third hand.
However the appropriateness is important to the context (eg "dont call me a N!gg$%" or black
artists who deliberately use it to be provacative)
Shor. I won't recite the fact but the link (along with some of the names that Quiggin
wanted) is a good discussion of it. It exhibits problematic Presumption of Guilt, Abstraction,
Essentialism
Emmanuel Cafferty: power company worker fired because he allegedly gave the OK symbol which
is allegedly a white power symbol. This very obviously Hispanic man in San Diego says he has no
idea that the OK symbol is a white power symbol and that he was just cracking his knuckles. BTW
the OK symbol thing is it's own area of insanity, where WP groups intentionally troll us to
make us look like overreacting ninnies. It requires so much context to explain to the
non-hyper-woke that it would be way easier to just never take the bait–because if you can
strongly suggest someone is racist without it, just do so. If you can't it is definitely not
worth it. Presumption of Guilt, Abstraction, Essentialism, Dualism
Dominique Moran fired from Chipotle because she insisted on getting payment from a group of
black men who specifically had had their cards declined only 2 days before, and who she had
been warned that those specific men had "dine and dashed". She became an internet exemplar of
racism so much so that her mother found out about it across the country. It wasn't until later
that other internet sleuths demonstrated that Chipotle had been set up for an internet
anti-racist mob. (Note that the company itself never figured that out on their own).
Presumption of Guilt, Essentialism,
Marlon Anderson was a [black] security guard at a Wisconsin high school. He was repeatedly
taunted as being a N!gg$% by students. He told the students that they absolutely could not call
him a N!gg$%. The students accused him of using the word N!gg$%, and he was fired for using
racial slurs. The only good news is that this firing is so ridiculous that it has generated
some serious pushback. (I could not however find out what happened). Presumption of Guilt,
Abstraction, Pseudo-Moralism, No Forgiveness
Sarah Silverman fired from her movie because she appeared in blackface in her show from more
than a decade before . The piece clearly indicates that white people take blackface too
casually and that they are wrong to do so. Abstraction, Essentialism, Pseudo-Moralism, No
Forgiveness, Dualism.
Israel Morales. Jewish restaurant attacked for being Nazi sympathizers because they didn't
overreact to a patron wearing a shirt with the work "Luftwaffe" on it. The owner didn't believe
it was as clear as the accuser said and tried to stop a confrontation in the restaurant. The
most annoying part is the final paragraph "For its part, Kachka's owners says they fear the
rumors could lead racists and neo-Nazis to assume the restaurant is a place that welcomes their
views. "Our fear is that this misinformation could cause discriminatory groups to think Kachka
is a safe haven, which it most certainly is not," Israel Morales wrote in a statement to Eater.
"We would like to reiterate that we never kicked anyone out for speaking up, we had no idea
what the symbol on the shirt meant, and if we had known, we would not have served him."
Presumption of Guilt, Abstraction, Essentialism, Pseudo-Moralism, Dualism, Transitive Property
(serving someone in a restaurant must mean you're a Nazi sympathizer).
Ahmad Daraldik accused of anti-Semitism for his comment "stupid jew thinks he is cool" which
he posted in response to a photo which is now said to be staged of an Israeli soldier stepping
on a child. Daraldik was TWELVE and living in the Palestinian territories at the time. This one
is still very much in process as it was just reported in July of 2020. I presume he will not be
actually removed from FSU. But it exhibits many of the cancel culture tropes. Abstraction,
Essentialism, Pseudo-Moralism, No Forgiveness, Dualism.
Neal Caren. UNC associate professor of sociology. Accused of creating an unsafe environment
for students of color for asking a white student to role-play a black person in order to try to
better understand racial issues. This was reported in early 2020 so it is too soon to tell
where the investigation will go. Presumption of Guilt, Abstraction, Essentialism,
Pseudo-Intellectualism, Dualism.
Gary Garrels. Senior curator of painting and sculpture at the SF Museum of Modern Art.
Museum employees sent a petition saying "Considering his lengthy tenure at this institution, we
ask just how long have his toxic white supremacist beliefs regarding race and equity directed
his position curating the content of the museum?" This apparently was in response to his
statements that he wanted to increase diversity and "Don't worry, we will definitely still
continue to collect white artists".
This may require a new trope of 'gross exaggeration', but I guess that is a Presumption of
Guilt issue, Abstraction, Essentialism, Pseudo-Moralism, Dualism.
Jonathan Friedland. Removed from Netflix for saying in a meeting that certain words were not
OK to broadcast in comedy and specifically saying that the word N!gg$% was one of them (he said
it aloud in the meeting).
This one might not be directly cancel culture in that there was no internet furor, but it
exhibits many of the tropes so I included it. Essentialism, Dualism, No Forgiveness. It also
took place on the job, so I understand that it is more of an edge case.
Gordon Klein. Currently suspended from teaching at UCLA for the following response to an ask
that exams be delayed for black students to allow participation in local BLM rallies (which
continued every day for more than a month). He contributed a rather snarky response which I
will copy here in full so that no one accuses me of hiding it. But not a firing/suspension
offense.
Thanks for your suggestion in your email below that I give black students special
treatment, given the tragedy in Minnesota. Do you know the names of the classmates that are
black? How can I identify them since we've been having online classes only? Are there any
students that may be of mixed parentage, such as half black-half Asian? What do you suggest I
do with respect to them? A full concession or just half? Also, do you have any idea if any
students are from Minneapolis? I assume that they probably are especially devastated as well.
I am thinking that a white student from there might be possibly even more devastated by this,
especially because some might think that they're racist even if they are not. My TA is from
Minneapolis, so if you don't know, I can probably ask her. Can you guide me on how you think
I should achieve a "no-harm" outcome since our sole course grade is from a final exam only?
One last thing strikes me: Remember that MLK famously said that people should not be
evaluated based on the "color of their skin." Do you think that your request would run afoul
of MLK's admonition?
Thanks, G. Klein
He also noted elsewhere that "previously he had received a directive from his supervisor in
the undergraduate Accounting program that instructors should only adjust final exam policies
and protocols based on standard university practices regarding grading[:] {"If students ask for
accommodations such as assignment delays or exam cancellations, I strongly encourage you to
follow the normal procedures (accommodations from the CAE office, death/illness in the family,
religious observance, etc.)."
Gibson's Bakery. Black Oberlin student detained for shoplifting, Oberlin school hierarchy
involved in an attempt to portray the Bakery as racist. The good news is that school's behavior
was terrible enough to cause them to lose a lawsuit over it. The bad news is that it was that
terrible.
Kathleen Lowrey. Forced out of her job in the University of Alberta as undergraduate
programs chair for what she believes are her views on gender. Shockingly the school won't even
tell her who accused her or exactly of what.
Niel Golightly. Boeing communication officer, resigned after pressure centering around a 33
year old article he wrote objecting to women in combat. He said that the dialogue around that
article 33 years ago changed his mind on the issue. This one is interesting because it is in
one of the few kinds of positions that I might believe off the job behavior could be relevant.
But I tend to think that 33 year old articles (of fairly common positions for the time) might
not be enough. Essentialism, No Forgiveness, Dualism.
Iranian-Canadian atheist (raised Muslim) fired for being anti-Islamic in his personal
facebook page rant against honor killings. "In response to these killings, Corey wrote 'F***
Islam. F*** honour killing. And f*** you if you believe in any of these barbaric stone age
ideologies.'" The response after ordering him to take down the post (he complied) "Despite
Corey's compliance, Wray responded "Your anti-Islamic social media post is in direct
contradiction with Mulgrave School's and Canadian values. It is racist and highly offensive. As
a result, I am immediately terminating any further relationship with you. You will no longer be
allowed to [do business with our school] and you should not enter the school building under any
circumstances.""
This report has been anonymized, so I understand if you want to take it as less
demonstrative.
Brian Leach was fired for sharing on Facebook a Billy Connolly sketch which colleagues
complained was anti-Islamic.
It was from Connolly's "Religion is Over" stage act, and if you listen to it is just as hard
on Christians as it is on Islam. It is essentially an atheistic rant. (The link has the
clip)
This discussion is on the bizarre article run by the Washington Post which got a woman of no
public interest fired for wearing blackface to try to make fun of Megan Kelly's stupid comments
about blackface. It has Abstraction, Essentialism, No Forgiveness, Transitive Property (via 3rd
parties! this was apparently newsworthy because the person who threw the party that the
costumed person showed up at also works at a newspaper!) and dualism.
I forgot to include the Vox accusations. They have a bunch of the tropes.
Emily VanDerWerff accuses Matt Yglesias of making her feel less safe at work as a trans
person for signing the Harper's letter which she asserts contains "many dog whistles toward
anti-trans positions".
Her definition of anti trans dog whistles is included at the link. It has huge Presumption
of Guilt and Abstraction problems. She claims to not want any consequences for Yglesias, but
if that is the case she shouldn't have used "feel less safe at work" which is less of a dog
whistle and more of an alarm bell for Human Resources to immediately open an investigation
into the (for cause) firing of someone.
Natalie Wynn also refers to Jo Freeman's 1976 piece on "Trashing," in which she describes
her experience of being ostracized by fellow feminists for alleged ideological deviation. The
dynamic of cancellation predates the internet.
(I don't know where a young you-tuber probably not born before the millennium encountered
Shulamith Firestone's old partner in crime, but I am delighted that she did! I know it shows
my age, but I think that young activists today could benefit a lot from reading what my
generation's activists wrote. Also, from getting off my lawn.)
From @130 oldster's Natalie Wynn link (good find!), I now have a description of "cancel
culture" that satisfies me. YMMV.
I lifted these straight from Natalie's headings – they're mostly self-explanatory. The
whole transcript is well worth reading; the back half has a nightmarish
fractal-hall-of-mirrors quality that's a good illustration of what it describes.
Trope 1: Presumption of Guilt
Trope 2: Abstraction
Trope 3: Essentialism
Trope 4: Pseudo-Moralism or Pseudo-Intellectualism
Trope 5: No Forgiveness
Trope 6: The Transitive Property of Cancellation
Trope 7: Dualism
For people who want data, here is the longest list of real or alleged cancel culture
incidents that I have seen. 156 cases. Have fun analyzing.
I think the list has a mostly rightwing bias, so I didn't see Finkelstein or Salaita
listed ( though maybe I missed it.)
For myself, I would have to look into them before judging, but of the handful that I know
something about, some I agree are genuine cases of people being unfairly cancelled, and
others I might possibly cancel myself. There are also gray areas.
I found the list via a piece by Cathy Young, but am too lazy to go back and link her
piece.
This is a mopping-up operation that is a product of media-activated mass psychosis that
derives from the already existing witch hunts and purges that have going on for decades.
Moldbug is a Zionist ultra, but he explains it well:
It's actually not hard to explain the Brown Scare. Like all witch hunts, it's built on a
conspiracy theory. The Red Scare was based on a conspiracy theory too, but at least it was
a real conspiracy with real witches -- two of whom were my father's parents. (The nicest
people on earth, as people. I like to think of them not as worshipping Stalin, but
worshipping what they thought Stalin was.) Moreover, the Red Scare was a largely demotic or
peasant phenomenon to which America's governing intellectual classes were, for obvious
reasons, immune. Because power works and culture is downstream from politics -- real
politics, at least -- the Red Scare soon faded into a joke.
As a mainstream conspiracy theory, fully in the institutional saddle, the Brown Scare is
far greater and more terrifying. Unfortunately no central statistics are kept, but I
wouldn't be surprised if every day in America, more racists, fascists and sexists are
detected, purged and destroyed, than all the screenwriters who had to prosper under
pseudonyms in the '50s. Indeed it's not an exaggeration to say that hundreds of thousands
of Americans, perhaps even a million, are employed in one arm or another of this
ideological apparatus. Cleaning it up will require a genuine cultural revolution -- or a
cultural reaction, anyway. Hey, Americans, I'm ready whenever you are.
The logic of the witch hunter is simple. It has hardly changed since Matthew Hopkins'
day. The first requirement is to invert the reality of power. Power at its most basic level
is the power to harm or destroy other human beings. The obvious reality is that witch
hunters gang up and destroy witches. Whereas witches are never, ever seen to gang up and
destroy witch hunters. By this test alone, we can see that the conspiracy is imaginary
(Brown Scare) rather than real (Red Scare).
Think about it. Obviously, if the witches had any power whatsoever, they wouldn't waste
their time gallivanting around on broomsticks, fellating Satan and cursing cows with sour
milk. They're getting burned right and left, for Christ's sake! Priorities! No, they'd turn
the tables and lay some serious voodoo on the witch-hunters. In a country where anyone who
speaks out against the witches is soon found dangling by his heels from an oak at midnight
with his head shrunk to the size of a baseball, we won't see a lot of witch-hunting and we
know there's a serious witch problem. In a country where witch-hunting is a stable and
lucrative career, and also an amateur pastime enjoyed by millions of hobbyists on the
weekend, we know there are no real witches worth a damn.
"People can have their voices amplified or silenced by their wealth, connections or
prestige but also by other speech which aims to deny them the right to participate on equal
terms with others."
It's unclear if this refers to those at the receiving end of speech the author wants to
prevent or the speaker deserving of canceling.
"As Jeremy Waldron has argued in his book The Harm in Hate Speech, racist speech aims not
just at hurting the feelings of its victims or expressing a view but at reconstituting the
public arena of democratic debate and argument so that some people are not seen as forming a
proper part of it."
It is very dubious that most slurs "aim" to "reconstitute the public arena of democratic
debate and argument so that some people are not seen as forming a proper part of it." Do you
have any support for this theory?
"It says that those people are not a part of "us" and that their opinions and arguments
have no place as we decide where our country should go."
It's not clear how a racial slur "says" any of this. Perhaps the author is reading
subtext?
"Racist speech by some also legitimizes and emboldens racist speech and opinion by others,
telling bigots that they are not alone, that others think as they do, and strengthens an
ideal of exclusive community based on ethnic or racial lines."
On this point it's worth quoting Henry Louis Gates Jr: "Why would you entrust authority
with enlarged powers of regulating the speech of unpopular minorities unless you were
confident that unpopular minorities would be racists, not blacks?"
"Anti-racist speech, has the opposite effect, it affirms a view that those targeted by the
racists, be they black, or Asian, or Muslim, are full members of the democratic political
community in good standing with as good a right to a say as anyone.
"It also reinforces a social norm about what may not be said, telling those who are
tempted to stigmatize migrants or minorities that they will pay a price for doing so."
It also creates a precedent for excluding views by shaming based on current sentiment.
Only someone oblivious to history wouldn't see the danger in that precedent.
"The role that speech plays in defining who is and isn't included in our vision of
democratic community can have powerful real-world consequence."
Who to include as part of your community is an important issue that should be discussed
openly by all of society. What you're trying to do is to elevate advance your position
without having to defend it.
"One way to understand the ease with which the victims of the Windrush scandal could lose
their jobs, their homes, their liberty or be deported to far-away countries, is that in the
public imaginary that is partly constituted by speech, many people did not see them as proper
members with equal standing to others."
Were we to do away with everything that had a downside we would have very little good.
Therefore arguing that something has potential downsides is not sufficient to establish that
it's not good. Can you argue that free expression and debate by citizenry on the most
important issues facing a democratic nation is not good, besides by arguing that there might
be some cost?
"Racist speech is just one example that makes clear how the practice of open discussion
isn't simply a matter of unfettered conversation among people who are already present but
also involves choices about who gets to speak and involves sensitivity to the way that speech
by some has the effect either of depriving others of a voice or of making it impossible for
others to hear what they say. A society which is full of highly sexualized messages about
women is also a society in which it is harder for women to get a hearing about sexual
violence and income inequality. A society where trans people are the objects of constant
ridicule, or are represented as dangerous, is one in which it is also more difficult for them
to argue for their rights and have their interests taken seriously."
This implies that the intolerant are the powerful group capable of suppressing minorities
with their speech alone. This is disproven by the very fact that anti-racist etc speech is so
successful. The success of antiracist codes of social conduct is because the group exercising
them is the powerful group. This very fact implies their obsolesce.
"Much of the pushback against cancel culture has come from prominent journalists and
intellectuals who perceive every negative reaction from ordinary people on social media as an
affront. Ironically, while being quick to take offence themselves they demand that those less
powerful than they are should toughen up and not be such "snowflakes"."
This is an uninformed or dishonest characterization of the pushback against cancel
culture. The pushback is due to intolerant enforcement of ideological conformity and
homogeneity through threat to job and reputation. And no this is not only ideological
conformity in that you can't say overtly racist things; it's ideological conformity in that
you can't criticize BLM or cite scientific literature on biological differences between the
sexes without risk.
"But if we take seriously the idea that speech can silence speech or make it unhearable,
then a concern with whether the heckling of cancel culture makes it harder to say some things
also has to take account of the fact that saying those very things can make it harder for
other voices to be heard."
This piece hasn't given any reason to make us take seriously the idea that speech against
one group can silence another, other then through threat to livelihood or reputation. It's
not clear though how for example referencing scientific but currently unpopular claims,
criticizing a social movement, having a narrower view on who should be considered a citizen
or even using a slur silences people.
An important problem is the conflation of public opprobrium actual sanctions like being
fired. This is mainly a problem in the US because of employment at will. In most countries,
unfair dismissal laws would protect people being sacked because of their political views,
unless they related directly to job performance. https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/04/free-speech-unfair-dismissal-and-unions/
But the fact that the same example (David Shor) is cited every time the issue is raised
suggests that losing your job for breaching left orthodoxy not a major problem in the US, or
at least that other possible examples are much less sympathetic (racists fired from Fox, for
example).
Mostly, AFAICT, being cancelled means having to read rude things said about you by lots of
unimportant people on Twitter, as opposed to engaging in caustic, but civilised, debate with
your peers in the pages of little magazines.
The question is who decides? Most readers here would agree that "[a] society that refuses
to tolerate speech like David Starkey's recent racist remarks about "damn blacks" and the
slave trade is better for it", but of the world's ~8 bln people, I strongly suspect that most
would believe that a society would be better off for refusing to tolerate speech about
abortions and homosexuality. So do we decide democratically? Through the ethics of
enlightened elites? An ever ongoing fight between the majority and the elite? Some other
method? Perhaps we fracture into mini-societies, each with their own standards of "better
off", which do not talk to one another?
From my perspective, there is thought and thought-like speech (anything without direct
call to action) , which ought to be maximally tolerated for both ethical and practical
reasons. Ethical because it dispenses with the requirement for absolute and inviolable
knowledge (and disempowers people who would otherwise need to select and enforce "allowed"
views. Practical because it encourages transparency (shutting racists up will not stop them
from thinking racist thoughts), intellectual development (new ideas can emerge to challenge
the existing wisdom) and rigor (having to often hear opposing viewpoints hones your
understanding of your own). Not to say that such tolerance has no costs whatsoever (e.g.
making it easier for racists to be racist in the short term, that you mention), but that the
benefits of such tolerance outweigh the costs.
What cannot be limitlessly tolerated are actions and action-like speech. To use my own
nationality as an example, I would have to fight back were a person to decide to try to kill
all Russians. For action-like speech, I would also be against an unlimited freedom for a
person to stand on the corner shouting "pick up a gun and go find a Russian to kill". But
change the phrasing slightly to "all Russians are evil, sub-human scum, I wish none of them
lived" and I would be hurt but okay with that, until and unless the speaker or their listener
decided to try to act on the sentiment. Indeed, it would give me a heads up about which
person (or people) to avoid. In a less extreme example, "shout that stupid Russian dow, how
dare he try to even voice an opinion!" is action-like speech (therefore needs limits), while
"I don't see the need to listen to Russians" is thought-like (and therefore better to be
tolerated). The problem with modern cancel culture is that it often responds to thought-like
speech with action-like speech.
Obviously, no one owes it to anyone else to listen to them. If you hear something you do
not like, you should be free to close the door on that person and never again invite them
into your company. But from my perspective it is an intellectually small and fragile mind
that looks to exercise this freedom at a mass scale or anything other than a last resort.
People who say stupid, hateful or offensive things are not examples to be emulated. This is
exactly the reason not to join a crowd saying rude or offensive things back at them. Surely,
we can form and promote communities of respect and diversity without needing to destroy
communities that are exclusionary and hateful? If we are right about what makes communities
better off, we will simply outcompete the latter, which will wither of their own accord.
Examples given show quite clearly that "cancel mob" is an established form of the political
struggle. And in this case the reasons behind the particular attack of the "cancel mob" is far
from charitable.
Cancel culture my assJustice for Brad HamiltonRoy Edroso Jul 14 38 30
Mendenhall loses endorsement deal over bin Laden tweets
[Steelers running back] Rashard Mendenhall's candid tweets about Osama bin Laden's death
and the 9/11 terror attacks cost him an endorsement deal.
NFL.com senior analyst Vic Carucci says Rashard Mendenhall has become an example of the
risks that social media can present to outspoken pro athletes.
Athletic apparel manufacturer Champion announced Thursday that it had dropped the
Pittsburgh Steelers running back after he questioned the celebrations of bid Laden's death
and expressed his uncertainty over official accounts of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in New
York, suburban Washington and Pennsylvania.
Things haven't gotten any better. I've already written about
Springfield, Mass. police detective Florissa Fuentes, who got fired this year for
reposting her niece's pro-Black Lives Matter Instagram photo. Fuentes is less like Donohue,
the Chicks, and Mendenhall, though, and more like most of the people who get fired for speech
in this country, in that she is not rich, and getting fired was for her a massive blow.
The controversy began after [Lisa] Durden's appearance [on Tucker Carlson], during which
she defended the Black Lives Matter movement's decision to host a Memorial Day celebration
in New York City to which only black people were invited. On the show, Durden's comments
included, "You white people are angry because you couldn't use your white privilege card to
get invited to the Black Lives Matter's all-black Memorial Day Celebration," and "We want
to celebrate today. We don't want anybody going against us today."
Durden was then an adjunct professor at Essex County College, but not for long because
sure enough, they fired her for what she said on the show. (Bet Carlson, a racist piece
of shit , was delighted!) The college president defended her decision, saying she'd
received "feedback from students, faculty and prospective students and their families
expressing frustration, concern and even fear that the views expressed by a college employee
(with influence over students) would negatively impact their experience on the campus..."
Sounds pretty snowflakey to me. I went looking in the works of the signatories of the
famous
Harper's letter against cancel culture for some sign that any of them had acknowledged
Durden's case. Shockingly, such free speech warriors as Rod Dreher and Bret Stephens never
dropped a word on it.
Dreher does come up in other free-speech-vs-employment cases, though -- for example, from
2017, Chronicle of Higher
Education :
Tommy Curry, an associate professor of philosophy at Texas A&M University at College
Station, about five years ago participated in a YouTube interview in which he discussed
race and violence. Those remarks resurfaced in May in a column titled "When Is It OK to
Kill Whites?" by Rod Dreher in The American Conservative.
Mr. Curry said of that piece that he wasn't advocating for violence and that his remarks
had been taken out of context. He told The Chronicle that online threats had arrived in
force shortly after that. Some were racial in nature.
At the same time the president of the university, Michael K. Young, issued a statement
in which he appeared to rebuke the remarks made by Mr. Curry...
In his column on
Curry , Dreher said, "I wonder what it is like to be a white student studying under Dr.
Curry in his classroom?" Imagine worrying for the safety of white people at Texas
Fucking A&M!
Curry got to keep his job, but only after he "issued a new statement apologizing for how
his remarks had been received," the Chronicle reported:
"For those of you who considered my comments disparaging to certain types of scholarly
work or in any way impinging upon the centrality of academic freedom at this university,"
[Curry] wrote, "I regret any contributions that I may have made to misunderstandings in
this case, including to those whose work is contextualized by understanding the historical
perspectives of events that have often been ignored."
Bottom line: Most of us who work for a living are at-will employees -- basically, the boss
can fire us if they don't like the way we look at them or if they don't like what they
discover we feel about the events of the day. There are some protections -- for example, if
you and your work buddies are talking about work stuff and the boss gets mad, then that may
be considered " concerted
activity " and protected -- but as
Lisa Guerin wrote at the nolo.com legal advice site, "political views aren't covered by
[Civil Rights] laws and the laws of most states. This means employers are free to consider
political views and affiliations in making job decisions."
Basically we employees have no free speech rights at all. But people like Stephens and
Dreher and Megan McArdle who cry
over how "the mob" is coming after them don't care about us. For window dressing, they'll
glom onto rare cases where a non-rich, non-credentialed guy gets in trouble for allegedly
racist behavior that he didn't really do -- Emmanuel Cafferty, it's your time
to shine ! -- but their real concern isn't Cafferty's "free speech" or that of any other
peon, it's their own miserable careers.
Because they know people are starting to talk back to them. It's not like back in the day
when Peggy Noonan and George F. Will mounted their high horses and vomited their wisdom onto
the rabble and maybe some balled-up Letters to the Editor might feebly come back at them but
that was it. Now commoners can go viral! People making fun of Bari Weiss might reach as many
people as Bari Weiss herself! The cancel culture criers may have wingnut welfare sinecures,
cushy pundit gigs, and the respect of all the Right People, but they can't help but notice
that when they glide out onto their balconies and emit their received opinions a lot of
people -- mostly younger, and thoroughly hip that these worthies are apologists for the
austerity debt servitude to which they've been condemned for life -- are not just coughing
"bullshit" into their fists, but shouting it out loud.
This, the cancel culture criers cry, is the mob! It threatens civilization!
Yet they cannot force us to pay attention or buy their shitty opinions. The sound and
smell of mockery disturbs their al fresco luncheons and
weddings at the Arboretum . So they rush to their writing desks and prepare
sternly-worded letters. Their colleagues will read and approve! Also, their editors and
relatives! And maybe also some poor dumb kids who know so little of the world that they'll
actually mistake these overpaid prats for victims and feel sorry for them.
Well, you've already heard what I think about it elsewhere: Protect workers' free speech
rights for real, I say -- let them be as woke, as racist, or as obstreperous they wish off
the clock and the boss can't squawk. The cancel culture criers won't go for that deal; in
fact such a thing has never entered their minds -- free-speech is to protect their delicate
sensibilities, not the livelihoods of people who work with their hands!
And in the new tradition of the working class asking for more rather than less of what
they want, I'll go further: I give not one flaming fuck if these assholes suffocate under a
barrage of rotten tomatoes, and I think Brad inFast Times at Ridgemont
Highgot a raw deal from All-American
Burger and should be reinstated with full back pay: That customer deserved to have
100% of his ass kicked!
Examples given show quite clearly that "cancel mob" is an established, albeit somewhat
dirty, form of the political struggle. Often the reasons behind the particular attack of
the "cancel mob" is far from charitable. Orwell's 1984 describes an extreme form of the
same.
there is a difference between Prudent speech and Free speech.
When punishment for voicing dissenting opinion includes physical assault it doesn't much
matter how rare the actual instances of physical violence are
Notable quotes:
"... Of course, it is not (yet) possible to determine the exact racism quotient of each individual, so exemplary cancellations are the means of influencing individuals to modify their behaviour. I appreciate that "racism quotient" and "exemplary cancellation" make me sound like one of those right-wing Orwell cosplayers, but I can't think of a better way of putting it. ..."
Cancel culture, I suggest, matters most when our ability to access diverse opinion is
curtailed as a result of speech policing, either by algorithms or individuals, especially in
the run-up to an election. Self-censorship in universities is equally important. When Chomsky
signed the Harper's letter, he reported he receive a great many letters of support from
academics terrified of being cancelled.
We're coming out of a certain kind of (neo-)liberal consensus in which politics was viewed
as a mostly technocratic business of setting laws in the abstract. That perspective was
sufficient to get some things right: many blatantly discriminatory laws have been repealed
across the Western world over the last 70 years. But it turns out that racism and sexism
don't require explicitly racist or sexist laws on the books: they can subvert neutral-seeming
laws to their purposes, and can bias the behaviour of individuals and networks of individuals
to the extent that widespread discrimination can continue...
The other strand focuses on the moral reform of white people. It proceeds from the
assumption that the law has only a limited role in moral conduct, and that the evidence of
the last 50 years is that removing explicitly racist legislation, and even legislating
anti-racism (e.g. affirmative action) isn't enough to secure good outcomes. If your
individual acts have the practical outcome of furthering or defending racist interests, then
you are part of the problem. The demands here are much harder to define. Rather than focusing
all attention on a specific reform that can be enacted in a single moment by an executive or
legislature, attention is cast broadly across all actions occurring at all times by all
people. Of course, it is not (yet) possible to determine the exact racism quotient of
each individual, so exemplary cancellations are the means of influencing individuals to
modify their behaviour. I appreciate that "racism quotient" and "exemplary cancellation" make
me sound like one of those right-wing Orwell cosplayers, but I can't think of a better way of
putting it.
All of this intersects with the modern reality of social media: things that "normal"
people might be able to say in a bar or a cafe discussion with friends or colleagues are now
part of the permanent public record, searchable and viewable by millions. Social media
provides excellent tools both for taking things out of context and re-contextualising them.
Secondly, "brands" or organisations are now direct participants, and can be subject to public
pressure in much more visible ways than previously.
I'm a big fan of biological metaphors; they keep one humble about the inevitability of
unintended consequences. The metaphor gets strained when it moves from external viral spread
to internal immune response, though; in the former, we're assuming a team of informed medical
professionals, seeing things from the "outside" with the authority implied by specialized and
objective knowledge. I'm not sure who these people correspond to in the world we inhabit,
where even the real doctors have trouble getting traction.
The internal immune response feels like a closer match, as surface protein markers are
proxies for identity, microbes display "false flags" to avoid detection, and auto-immune and
inflammatory responses often do more damage than the threats they're reacting to.
On both levels of metaphor, it seems clear that the structure of social media is explicitly
designed to create and exploit "virality"; we need to rethink what this means for us.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/29/social-distancing-social-media-facebook-misinformation
" No one seems to reflect here that silencing people because of their politics is
historically and usually the preserve of those with the power to silence – that is,
conservatives. Be careful what you wish for."
And here we have the cancel culture "problem" in a nutshell. The complaint isn't that
Musgrave lost a job or is literally forbidden to speak or even lacks reasonable ways to be
heard. The complaint is that blog found him distasteful and doesn't want him commenting
there. This isn't a right to speak issue, it's a demand to be heard issue.
Far worse things are done to BLM protesters. Being denied a blog posting? Try being denied
the right to even assemble, and shot with tear gas and rubber bullets. That didn't stop me
from protesting. Being denied a blog post and hearing some harsh criticism is nothing.
I broadly agree with the points about free speech in the post, and Waldron's arguments,
but I don't think it's right to equate the debate about "cancel culture" with these
issues.
John's understanding of it is even more dismissive (and imo off-target).
being cancelled means having to read rude things said about you by lots of unimportant
people on Twitter, as opposed to engaging in caustic, but civilised, debate with your peers
in the pages of little magazines
It seems to me cancel culture is both an ethos and a tactic. The ethos involves a zero
tolerance approach to certain ethical transgressions (eg overt expressions of racism) and an
absolute devaluation of people who commit them. The tactic is based around achieving cultural
change by exerting collective pressure as consumers on managers of corporations (or
corporation-like entities, like universities) to terminate transgressors, as a way of
incentivising other emplpoyees to fall into line. It seems to me to be heavily shaped by and
dependent on American neoliberalism as the ethos is both punitive and consumerist and the
tactic is dependent on at-will employment and managers' deference to customer sentiment, and
while most of its current "successes" have been broadly of the Left there's no reason to
assume that will be the case in future. I think it does represent a weakening of liberal
norms of freedom of discussion and I think Chomsky's right to be concerned.
There's nothing new about speech codes. Puritans and others refused to employ the Book of
Common prayer demanded by the Act of Uniformity of 1662. Scolds and speech police can be
found among agnostics, people of faith, and across the political spectrum. Nor is the common
sense exercise of good judgement regarding when, or if, to suggest to a friend he, she, or
they might like to lose a little weight, or to refrain from pointing out the questionable
personal grooming habits of a colleague, client, superior, or family member.
Do I need to declare my beliefs and opinions on every topic freely in every forum. In my
own case, no. And there's a big difference between being shunned and being imprisoned, or
executed, for mocking the wrong text or monarch.
As I courtesy, I might well avoid broaching topics I'm aware may distress another. But
that's a far cry from what's happening in modern old media. Bari Weiss evidently had her
privileges to write and edit others freely severely curtailed. And, yes, I'm aware that she
had cancellation issues of her own. But forcing James Bennett to resign, who put Ta-Nehisi
Coates on the cover of the Atlantic, for permitting a US senator to publish an op-ed in the
NYT?
We need a diverse set of values and beliefs, argues Henry, J. S. Mill, and others. The
head of Google is just now trying to explain why "Washington Free Beacon, The Blaze,
Townhall, The Daily Wire, PragerU, LifeNews, Project Veritas, Judicial Watch, The Resurgent,
Breitbart, the Media Research Center, and CNSNews" somehow disappeared from the Google search
engine.
https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/29/google-ceo-dodges-question-on-blacklisting-of-conservative-websites/
Cancel culture, I suggest, matters most when our ability to access diverse opinion is
curtailed as a result of speech policing, either by algorithms or individuals, especially in
the run-up to an election. Self-censorship in universities is equally important. When Chomsky
signed the Harper's letter, he reported he receive a great many letters of support from
academics terrified of being cancelled.
When punishment for voicing dissenting opinion includes physical assault it doesn't much
matter how rare the actual instances of physical violence are. I spoke with an American
colleague employed this week who stated that any dating which is going on among staff and
adults of one kind or another on campus is done in secrecy, if at all. Do Democrats feel that
they're better off having thrown Al Franken under the bus?
Adhering to speech codes and surrendering to a tiny, highly vocal mob seems a very bad
idea to me, and I suspect, many, many others. We don't quite know what to do with the
screaming adolescents of varying ages, but we wish they'd stop yelling.
The good news is that we live in societies, for the most part, which permit the upset to
act out freely. I wonder whether the folks currently trying to burn down the US federal
courthouse in Portland believe their rights to privacy must be respected? The
double-standards on display roil what should be reasonable debate. It should be possible to
disagree civilly with anyone.
Trying to get someone fired, or shunned, for any reason, is about the saddest waste of
energy and time I can imagine – I mean, talk about a poverty of imagination. It's
happened to me here on occasion. When the pitchforks come out, I know my opponents 'got
nothing.' That's small solace, however, when watching those I'd prefer to respect do their
best to stifle debate.
Relative to other nations, we enjoy liberties others can only dream of. These liberties
are worth protecting. I'm not sure we're doing such a good job.
With all due respect, you – like the great majority of people – fail to
understand the dynamics involved. 'Cultural Marxism' isn't political Marxism. It is a method
– a tool if you wish – used by the oligarchs who wield true power to 'divide and
rule' (not least by deflecting attention from the yawning gulf that lies between their own
excesses and monstrous wealth on the one hand, and the increasing indigence of the great mass
of people on the other). It is called 'Cultural Marxism' purely because it uses Marx's
technique of dividing society into a small clique of 'oppressors' and 'the masses' who are
'oppressed'. Marx, of course, had the capitalists in mind when he wrote of the oppressors,
and the proletariat naturally were the oppressed.
Today, the last thing the oligarchs desire is a unified and organised proletariat with
'agency': that would constitute a serious threat to their existence. Instead, they divide the
sacred role of 'the oppressed' into a multitude of more or less fissiparous groups, whom we
are all aware of, but of which those comprising 'BAME' are perhaps the most useful. Others
include feminists (more or less all young women in today's world), homos, those suffering
from sexual dysphoria (that's 'trannies' in today's 'Newspeak') and the disabled.
These groups will never discover any common ground between themselves, and thus will fight
among themselves for the scraps thrown from the oligarchs' table. No danger there, and that's
just how they planned it. As for the 'oppressors', there are no prizes for guessing that they
are White, heterosexual (i.e. normal) males.
So much for your fear of actual Marxism. As for 'the government', it is important to
understand that no government in today's West is invested with any meaningful power. Not only
are they not 'sovereign' but they are little more than puppets, dancing to their masters'
dismal tunes.
Who are these oligarchs – these Masters of the Universe? That's a story for another
day. But you won't go far wrong if you place the word 'oligarchs' in triple parentheses
The "Kulak Operation" and the targeting of national minorities were the
main components of the Great Terror. Together these two actions accounted for nine-tenths of
the death sentences and three-fourths of Gulag prison camp sentences. Of the operations
against national minorities, the Polish Operation of the NKVD
was the largest one, second only to the "Kulak Operation" in terms of number of victims.
According to historian Timothy Snyder , ethnic Poles constituted
the largest group of victims in the Great Terror, comprising less than 0.5% of the country's
population but comprising 12.5% of those executed. [9]
In the Western world, Robert Conquest 's 1968 book The Great Terror
popularized the phrase. Conquest's title itself was an allusion to the period from the French Revolution known as the
Reign of Terror
(French: la Terreur , 'the Terror'; from June to July 1794: la Grande Terreur ,
'the Great Terror'). [10] While
Norman Naimark
deemed Stalin's 1930s Polish policy " genocidal ," he did not consider the entire Great
Purge genocidal because it also targeted political opponents. [11]
An important problem is the conflation of public opprobrium actual sanctions like being
fired. This is mainly a problem in the US because of employment at will
No. The cancel culture is just a new incarnation of the old idea of religious and
pseudo-religious (aka Marxist or Maoist) "purges". A new flavor of inquisition so to speak.
The key idea here is the elimination of opposition for a particular Messianic movement, and
securing all the positions that can influence public opinion. As well as protection of own
(often dominant) position in the structure of political power (this was the idea behind Mao
"cultural revolution")
You probably can benefit from studying the mechanic of Stalin purges. Mechanisms are the
pretty similar ("History repeats ", etc) .
If opposition to the new brand of Messianism is suppressed under the smoke screen of
political correctness, the question arise how this is different from Stalinist ideas of
"Intensification of the class struggle under socialism" and Mao Red Guards excesses (see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensification_of_the_class_struggle_under_socialism
)
You can probably start with "Policing Stalin's Socialism: Repression and Social Order in the
Soviet Union, 1924-1953 (Yale-Hoover Series on Authoritarian Regimes)"
A new book which waits for its author can be similarly titled "Policing US neoliberalism :
Repression and Social Order in the USA 1980-2020") ;-)
Here is one thought-provoking comment from the Web:
GeeBee, August 1, 2020 at 7:42 am GMT
The government will eventually be Marxist
With all due respect, you – like the great majority of people – fail to
understand the dynamics involved. 'Cultural Marxism' isn't political Marxism. It is a method
– a tool if you wish – used by the oligarchs who wield true power to 'divide and
rule' (not least by deflecting attention from the yawning gulf that lies between their own
excesses and monstrous wealth on the one hand, and the increasing indigence of the great mass
of people on the other).
It is called 'Cultural Marxism' purely because it uses Marx's technique of dividing
society into a small clique of 'oppressors' and 'the masses' who are 'oppressed'. Marx, of
course, had the capitalists in mind when he wrote of the oppressors, and the proletariat
naturally were the oppressed.
Today, the last thing the oligarchs desire is a unified and organised proletariat with
'agency': that would constitute a serious threat to their existence. Instead, they divide the
sacred role of 'the oppressed' into a multitude of more or less fissiparous groups, whom we
are all aware of, but of which those comprising 'BAME' are perhaps the most useful. Others
include feminists (more or less all young women in today's world), homos, those suffering
from sexual dysphoria (that's 'trannies' in today's 'Newspeak') and the disabled.
These groups will never discover any common ground between themselves, and thus will fight
among themselves for the scraps thrown from the oligarchs' table. No danger there, and that's
just how they planned it. As for the 'oppressors', there are no prizes for guessing that they
are White, heterosexual (i.e. normal) males.
So much for your fear of actual Marxism. As for 'the government', it is important to
understand that no government in today's West is invested with any meaningful power.
Not only are they not 'sovereign' but they are little more than puppets, dancing to their
masters' dismal tunes.
Who are these oligarchs – these Masters of the Universe? That's a story for another
day. But you won't go far wrong if you place the word 'oligarchs' in triple parentheses
"Cancel culture" has recently been in the news as a threat to free speech and open debate,
most notably with the publication the other week of that open letter in Harpers. Cancelling is
essentially a kind of crowdsourced attempt to boycott and ostracise individuals for their words
or actions, sometimes including calls for them they be fired from their jobs or denied
contracts and opportunities by media organisations.
In the democratic space of social media this can sometimes tip over into unpleasant mobbing
and sometimes bullying. But is "cancelling" people always wrong? Is the practice always an
attack on the norms of free speech and open debate? Might cancelling some people be necessary
to ensure others get the voice and platform to which they are entitled?
One objection to "cancellation" is that it chills open debate and makes people
self-censor.
casmilus 07.30.20 at 7:19 am (no link)
Discrediting and marginalisation already occurred – just look at how David Irving's
status changed over the decades (notoriously, the early book about Dresden is cited in
"Slaughterhouse 5"). So we've simply accelerated the process in the digital age.
My contrarian take is that "the campus Left" actually had more power in the
70s/80s. In a world with no internet and limited independent publishing and distribution,
public meetings were the route to disseminate new ideas, so no-platforming and picketing
could have an effect. Look at "The History Man" (the 1981 BBC TV adaptation) for a portrayal
of what it was like; all that "soft power" is forgotten because of course Thatcher and Reagan
won the grown-up elections. Also note that that was a world where the university as an
institution had much less to fear from individual students who might feel discriminated
against. In comparison, no one can actually suppress ideas nowadays and even banning books
from the libraries leaves them available in the virtual library of websites.
The reality also is that "cancelled" authors acquire new readerships and can move into
different circles. Ex-lefties have been doing that since the 1930s: Freida Utley, Eugebe
Lyons, James Burnham and of course Whittaker Chambers fell-out and immediately fell-in to
bigger audiences.
chrisare 07.30.20 at 9:20 am (no link)
I found this piece unconvincing.
"People can have their voices amplified or silenced by their wealth, connections or
prestige but also by other speech which aims to deny them the right to participate on equal
terms with others."
It's unclear if this refers to those at the receiving end of speech the author wants to
prevent or the speaker deserving of canceling.
"As Jeremy Waldron has argued in his book The Harm in Hate Speech, racist speech aims not
just at hurting the feelings of its victims or expressing a view but at reconstituting the
public arena of democratic debate and argument so that some people are not seen as forming a
proper part of it."
It is very dubious that most slurs "aim" to "reconstitute the public arena of democratic
debate and argument so that some people are not seen as forming a proper part of it." Do you
have any support for this theory?
"It says that those people are not a part of "us" and that their opinions and arguments
have no place as we decide where our country should go."
It's not clear how a racial slur "says" any of this. Perhaps the author is reading
subtext?
"Racist speech by some also legitimizes and emboldens racist speech and opinion by others,
telling bigots that they are not alone, that others think as they do, and strengthens an
ideal of exclusive community based on ethnic or racial lines."
On this point it's worth quoting Henry Louis Gates Jr: "Why would you entrust authority
with enlarged powers of regulating the speech of unpopular minorities unless you were
confident that unpopular minorities would be racists, not blacks?"
"Anti-racist speech, has the opposite effect, it affirms a view that those targeted by the
racists, be they black, or Asian, or Muslim, are full members of the democratic political
community in good standing with as good a right to a say as anyone.
"It also reinforces a social norm about what may not be said, telling those who are
tempted to stigmatize migrants or minorities that they will pay a price for doing so."
It also creates a precedent for excluding views by shaming based on current sentiment.
Only someone oblivious to history wouldn't see the danger in that precedent.
"The role that speech plays in defining who is and isn't included in our vision of
democratic community can have powerful real-world consequence."
Who to include as part of your community is an important issue that should be discussed
openly by all of society. What you're trying to do is to elevate advance your position
without having to defend it.
"One way to understand the ease with which the victims of the Windrush scandal could lose
their jobs, their homes, their liberty or be deported to far-away countries, is that in the
public imaginary that is partly constituted by speech, many people did not see them as proper
members with equal standing to others."
Were we to do away with everything that had a downside we would have very little good.
Therefore arguing that something has potential downsides is not sufficient to establish that
it's not good. Can you argue that free expression and debate by citizenry on the most
important issues facing a democratic nation is not good, besides by arguing that there might
be some cost?
"Racist speech is just one example that makes clear how the practice of open discussion
isn't simply a matter of unfettered conversation among people who are already present but
also involves choices about who gets to speak and involves sensitivity to the way that speech
by some has the effect either of depriving others of a voice or of making it impossible for
others to hear what they say. A society which is full of highly sexualized messages about
women is also a society in which it is harder for women to get a hearing about sexual
violence and income inequality. A society where trans people are the objects of constant
ridicule, or are represented as dangerous, is one in which it is also more difficult for them
to argue for their rights and have their interests taken seriously."
This implies that the intolerant are the powerful group capable of suppressing minorities
with their speech alone. This is disproven by the very fact that anti-racist etc speech is so
successful. The success of antiracist codes of social conduct is because the group exercising
them is the powerful group. This very fact implies their obsolesce.
"Much of the pushback against cancel culture has come from prominent journalists and
intellectuals who perceive every negative reaction from ordinary people on social media as an
affront. Ironically, while being quick to take offence themselves they demand that those less
powerful than they are should toughen up and not be such "snowflakes"."
This is an uninformed or dishonest characterization of the pushback against cancel
culture. The pushback is due to intolerant enforcement of ideological conformity and
homogeneity through threat to job and reputation. And no this is not only ideological
conformity in that you can't say overtly racist things; it's ideological conformity in that
you can't criticize BLM or cite scientific literature on biological differences between the
sexes without risk.
"But if we take seriously the idea that speech can silence speech or make it unhearable,
then a concern with whether the heckling of cancel culture makes it harder to say some things
also has to take account of the fact that saying those very things can make it harder for
other voices to be heard."
This piece hasn't given any reason to make us take seriously the idea that speech against
one group can silence another, other then through threat to livelihood or reputation. It's
not clear though how for example referencing scientific but currently unpopular claims,
criticizing a social movement, having a narrower view on who should be considered a citizen
or even using a slur silences people.
An important problem is the conflation of public opprobrium actual sanctions like being
fired. This is mainly a problem in the US because of employment at will. In most countries,
unfair dismissal laws would protect people being sacked because of their political views,
unless they related directly to job performance. https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/04/free-speech-unfair-dismissal-and-unions/
But the fact that the same example (David Shor) is cited every time the issue is raised
suggests that losing your job for breaching left orthodoxy not a major problem in the US, or
at least that other possible examples are much less sympathetic (racists fired from Fox, for
example).
Mostly, AFAICT, being cancelled means having to read rude things said about you by lots of
unimportant people on Twitter, as opposed to engaging in caustic, but civilised, debate with
your peers in the pages of little magazines.
PS [email protected] reminded me of a line from the movie Reds. Warren Beatty's John Reed spoke of
people who "though Karl Marx wrote a good antitrust law." This was not a favorable comment.
The confusion of socialism and what might be called populism is quite, quite old. Jack
London's The Iron Heel has its hero pointing out even before the Great (Class) War that the
normal operations of capitalism, concentration and centralization, destroyed the middle class
paradise of equal competition. It wasn't conspiracies.
likbez 07.29.20 at 3:30 pm
@steven t johnson 07.29.20 at 3:14 pm (51)
Jack London's The Iron Heel has its hero pointing out even before the Great (Class) War
that the normal operations of capitalism, concentration and centralization, destroyed the
middle class paradise of equal competition.
I think the size of the USA military budget by itself means the doom for the middle class,
even without referring to famous Jack London book (The Iron Heel is cited by George Orwell 's
biographer Michael Shelden as having influenced Orwell's most famous novel Nineteen
Eighty-Four.).
Wall Street and MIC (especially intelligence agencies ; Allen Dulles was a Wall Street
lawyer) are joined at the hip. And they both fully control MSM. As Jack London aptly said:
"The press of the United States? It is a parasitic growth that battens on the capitalist
class. Its function is to serve the established by moulding public opinion, and right well it
serves it." ― Jack London, The Iron Heel
Financial capitalism is bloodthirstily by definition as it needs new markets. It fuels wars.
In a sense, Bolton is the symbol of financial capitalism foreign policy.
It is important to understand that finance capitalism creates positive feedback loop in the
economy increasing instability of the system. So bubbles are immanent feature of finance
capitalism, not some exception or the result of excessive greed.
"... Color Revolution is the term used to describe a series of remarkably effective CIA-led regime change operations using techniques developed by the RAND Corporation, "democracy" NGOs and other groups since the 1980's. They were used in crude form to bring down the Polish communist regime in the late 1980s. From there the techniques were refined and used, along with heavy bribes, to topple the Gorbachev regime in the Soviet Union. For anyone who has studied those models closely, it is clear that the protests against police violence led by amorphous organizations with names like Black Lives Matter or Antifa are more than purely spontaneous moral outrage. Hundreds of thousands of young Americans are being used as a battering ram to not only topple a US President, but in the process, the very structures of the US Constitutional order. ..."
"... Alicia Garza of BLM is also a board member or executive of five different Freedom Road front groups including 2011 Board chair of Right to the City Alliance, Board member of School of Unity and Liberation (SOUL), of People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), Forward Together and Special Projects director of National Domestic Workers Alliance. ..."
"... The Right to the City Alliance got $6.5 million between 2011 and 2014 from a number of very established tax-exempt foundations including the Ford Foundation ($1.9 million), from both of George Soros's major tax-exempts–Open Society Foundations, and the Foundation to Promote Open Society for $1.3 million. Also the cornflake-tied Kellogg Foundation $250,000, and curiously , Ben & Jerry's Foundation (ice cream) for $30,000. ..."
"... That front since 2009 received $1.3 million from the Ford Foundation, as well as $600,000 from the Soros foundations and again, Ben & Jerry's ($50,000). ..."
"... And Garza's SOUL, which claimed to have trained 712 "organizers" in 2014, when she co-founded Black Lives Matter, got $210,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation and another $255,000 from the Heinz Foundation (ketchup and John Kerry family) among others. ..."
"... Nigeria-born BLM co-founder Opal Tometi likewise comes from the network of FRSO. Tometi headed the FRSO's Black Alliance for Just Immigration. Curiously with a "staff" of two it got money from major foundations including the Kellogg Foundation for $75,000 and Soros foundations for $100,000, and, again, Ben & Jerry's ($10,000). Tometi got $60,000 in 2014 to direct the group . ..."
"... The BLMF identified itself as being created by top foundations including in addition to the Ford Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation and the Soros Open Society Foundations. They described their role: "The BLMF provides grants, movement building resources, and technical assistance to organizations working advance the leadership and vision of young, Black, queer, feminists and immigrant leaders who are shaping and leading a national conversation about criminalization, policing and race in America." ..."
"... Notably, when we click on the website of M4BL, under their donate button we learn that the donations will go to something called ActBlue Charities. ActBlue facilitates donations to "democrats and progressives." As of May 21, ActBlue had given $119 million to the campaign of Joe Biden. ..."
"... What is clear from only this account of the crucial role of big money foundations behind protest groups such as Black lives Matter is that there is a far more complex agenda driving the protests now destabilizing cities across America. ..."
"... The role of tax-exempt foundations tied to the fortunes of the greatest industrial and financial companies such as Rockefeller, Ford, Kellogg, Hewlett and Soros says that there is a far deeper and far more sinister agenda to current disturbances than spontaneous outrage would suggest. ..."
Color Revolution is the term used to describe a series of remarkably effective CIA-led
regime change operations using techniques developed by the RAND Corporation, "democracy" NGOs
and other groups since the 1980's. They were used in crude form to bring down the Polish
communist regime in the late 1980s. From there the techniques were refined and used, along with
heavy bribes, to topple the Gorbachev regime in the Soviet Union. For anyone who has studied
those models closely, it is clear that the protests against police violence led by amorphous
organizations with names like Black Lives Matter or Antifa are more than purely spontaneous
moral outrage. Hundreds of thousands of young Americans are being used as a battering ram to
not only topple a US President, but in the process, the very structures of the US
Constitutional order.
If we step back from the immediate issue of videos showing a white Minneapolis policeman
pressing his knee on the neck of a black man, George Floyd , and look at what has taken place
across the nation since then, it is clear that certain organizations or groups were
well-prepared to instrumentalize the horrific event for their own agenda.
The protests since May 25 have often begun peacefully only to be taken over by well-trained
violent actors. Two organizations have appeared regularly in connection with the violent
protests -- Black Lives Matter and Antifa (USA). Videos show well-equipped protesters dressed
uniformly in black and masked (not for coronavirus to be sure), vandalizing police cars,
burning police stations, smashing store windows with pipes or baseball bats. Use of Twitter and
other social media to coordinate "hit-and-run" swarming strikes of protest mobs is evident.
What has unfolded since the Minneapolis trigger event has been compared to the wave of
primarily black ghetto protest riots in 1968. I lived through those events in 1968 and what is
unfolding today is far different. It is better likened to the Yugoslav color revolution that
toppled Milosevic in 2000.
Gene Sharp: Template for Regime Overthrow
In the year 2000 the US State Department, aided by its National Endowment for Democracy
(NED) and select CIA operatives, began secretly training a group of Belgrade university
students led by a student group that was called Otpor! (Resistance!). The NED and its various
offshoots was created in the 1980's by CIA head Bill Casey as a covert CIA tool to overthrow
specific regimes around the world under the cover of a human rights NGO. In fact, they get
their money from Congress and from USAID.
In the Serb Otpor! destabilization of 2000, the NED and US Ambassador Richard Miles in
Belgrade selected and trained a group of several dozen students, led by Srđa Popović,
using the handbook, From Dictatorship to Democracy, translated to Serbian, of
the late Gene Sharp and his Albert Einstein Institution. In a post mortem on the Serb events,
the Washington Post wrote, "US-funded consultants played a crucial role behind the scenes in
virtually every facet of the anti-drive, running tracking polls, training thousands of
opposition activists and helping to organize a vitally important parallel vote count. US
taxpayers paid for 5,000 cans of spray paint
used by student activists to scrawl anti-Milošević graffiti on walls across
Serbia."
Trained squads of activists were deployed in protests to take over city blocks with the aid
of 'intelligence helmet' video screens that give them an instantaneous overview of their
environment. Bands of youth converging on targeted intersections in constant dialogue on cell
phones, would then overwhelm police. The US government spent some $41 million on the operation.
Student groups were secretly trained in the Sharp handbook techniques of staging protests that
mocked the authority of the ruling police, showing them to be clumsy and impotent against the
youthful protesters. Professionals from the CIA and US State Department guided them behind the
scenes.
The Color Revolution Otpor! model was refined and deployed in 2004 as the Ukraine Orange
Revolution with logo and color theme scarves, and in 2003 in Georgia as the Rose Revolution.
Later Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used the template to launch the Arab Spring. In all
cases the NED was involved
with other NGOs including the Soros Foundations.
After defeating Milosevic, Popovic went on to establish a global color revolution training
center, CANVAS, a kind of for-profit business consultancy for revolution, and was personally
present in New York working reportedly with Antifa during the Occupy Wall Street where also
Soros money was reported.
Antifa and BLM
The protests, riots, violent and non-violent actions sweeping across the United States since
May 25, including an assault on the gates of the White House, begin to make sense when we
understand the CIA's Color Revolution playbook.
The impact of the protests would not be possible were it not for a network of local and
state political officials inside the Democratic Party lending support to the protesters, even
to the point the Democrat Mayor of Seattle ordered police to abandon several blocks in the
heart of downtown to occupation by protesters.
In recent years major portions of the Democratic Party across the US have been quietly taken
over by what one could call radical left candidates. Often they win with active backing of
organizations such as Democratic Socialists of America or Freedom Road Socialist Organizations.
In the US House of Representatives the vocal quarter of new representatives around Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib and Minneapolis Representative Ilhan Omar are
all members or close to Democratic Socialists of America. Clearly without sympathetic
Democrat local officials in key cities, the street protests of organizations such as Black
Lives Matter and Antifa would not have such a dramatic impact.
To get a better grasp how serious the present protest movement is we should look at who has
been pouring millions into BLM. The Antifa is more difficult owing to its explicit anonymous
organization form. However, their online Handbook openly recommends that local Antifa "cells"
join up with BLM chapters.
FRSO: Follow the Money
BLM began in 2013 when three activist friends created the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag to
protest the allegations of shooting of an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Martin by a white
Hispanic block watchman, George Zimmermann. Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi
were all were connected with and financed by front groups tied to something called Freedom Road
Socialist Organization, one of the four largest radical left organizations in the United States
formed out of something called New Communist Movement that dissolved in the 1980s.
On June 12, 2020 the Freedom Road Socialist Organization webpage states, "The time is now to
join a revolutionary organization! Join Freedom Road Socialist Organization If you have been
out in the streets this past few weeks, the odds are good that you've been thinking about the
difference between the kind of change this system has to offer, and the kind of change this
country needs. Capitalism is a failed system that thrives on exploitation, inequality and
oppression. The reactionary and racist Trump administration has made the pandemic worse. The
unfolding economic crisis we are experiencing is the worst since the 1930s. Monopoly capitalism
is a dying system and we need to help finish it off. And that is exactly what Freedom Road
Socialist Organization is
working for ."
In short the protests over the alleged police killing of a black man in Minnesota are now
being used to call for a revolution against capitalism. FRSO is an umbrella for dozens of
amorphous groups including Black Lives Matter or BLM. What is interesting about the
self-described Marxist-Leninist roots of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) is not
so much their left politics as much as their very establishment funding by a group of
well-endowed tax-exempt foundations.
Alicia Garza of BLM is also a board member or executive of five different Freedom Road front
groups including 2011 Board chair of Right to the City Alliance, Board member of School of
Unity and Liberation (SOUL), of People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), Forward
Together and Special Projects director of National Domestic Workers Alliance.
The Right to the City Alliance got $6.5 million between 2011 and 2014 from a number of very
established tax-exempt foundations including the Ford Foundation ($1.9 million), from both of
George Soros's major tax-exempts–Open Society Foundations, and the Foundation to Promote
Open Society for $1.3 million. Also the cornflake-tied Kellogg Foundation $250,000, and
curiously , Ben
& Jerry's Foundation (ice cream) for $30,000.
Garza also got major foundation money as Executive Director of the FRSO front, POWER, where
Obama former "green jobs czar" Van Jones, a self-described "communist" and "rowdy black
nationalist," now with CNN, was on the board. Alicia Garza also chaired the Right to the City
Alliance, a network of activist groups opposing urban gentrification. That front since 2009
received $1.3 million from the Ford Foundation, as well as $600,000 from the Soros foundations
and again, Ben & Jerry's ($50,000).
And Garza's SOUL, which claimed to have trained 712
"organizers" in 2014, when she co-founded Black Lives Matter, got $210,000 from the Rockefeller
Foundation and another $255,000 from the Heinz Foundation (ketchup and John Kerry family) among
others. With the Forward Together of FRSO, Garza sat on the board of a "multi-racial
organization that works with community leaders and organizations to transform culture and
policy to catalyze social change." It officially got $4 million in 2014 revenues and from 2012
and 2014, the organization received a total of $2.9 million from Ford Foundation ($655,000) and
other major
foundations .
Nigeria-born BLM co-founder Opal Tometi likewise comes from the network of FRSO. Tometi
headed the FRSO's Black Alliance for Just Immigration. Curiously with a "staff" of two it got
money from major foundations including the Kellogg Foundation for $75,000 and Soros foundations
for $100,000, and, again, Ben & Jerry's ($10,000). Tometi got $60,000 in 2014 to direct the group .
The Freedom Road Socialist Organization that is now openly calling for a revolution against
capitalism in the wake of the Floyd George killing has another arm, The Advancement Project,
which describes itself as "a next generation, multi-racial civil rights organization." Its
board includes a former Obama US Department of Education Director of Community Outreach and a
former Bill Clinton Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. The FRSO Advancement Project
in 2013 got millions from major US tax-exempt foundations including Ford
($8.5 million), Kellogg ($3 million), Hewlett Foundation of HP defense industry founder ($2.5
million), Rockefeller Foundation ($2.5 million), and Soros foundations ($8.6 million).
Major Money and ActBlue
By 2016, the presidential election year where Hillary Clinton was challenging Donald Trump,
Black Lives Matter had established itself as a well-organized network. That year the Ford
Foundation and Borealis Philanthropy announced the formation of the Black-Led Movement Fund
(BLMF), "a six-year pooled donor campaign aimed at raising $100 million for the Movement for
Black Lives coalition" in which BLM was a central part. By then Soros foundations had already
given some $33 million in
grants to the Black Lives Matter movement . This was serious foundation money.
The BLMF identified itself as being created by top foundations including in addition to the
Ford Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation and the Soros Open Society Foundations. They described
their role: "The BLMF provides grants, movement building resources, and technical assistance to
organizations working advance the leadership and vision of young, Black, queer, feminists and
immigrant leaders who are shaping and leading a national
conversation about criminalization, policing and race in America."
The Movement for Black Lives Coalition (M4BL) which includes Black Lives Matter, already in
2016 called for "defunding police departments, race-based reparations, voting rights for
illegal immigrants, fossil-fuel divestment, an end to private education and charter schools, a
universal basic income, and
free college for blacks ."
Notably, when we click on the website of M4BL, under their donate button we learn that the
donations will go to something called ActBlue Charities. ActBlue facilitates donations to
"democrats and progressives." As of May 21, ActBlue had given $119 million to the campaign
of Joe Biden.
That was before the May 25 BLM worldwide protests. Now major corporations such as Apple,
Disney, Nike and hundreds others may be pouring untold and unaccounted millions into ActBlue
under the name of Black Lives Matter, funds that in fact can go to fund the election of a
Democrat President Biden. Perhaps this is the real reason the Biden campaign has been so
confident of support from black voters.
What is clear from only this account of the crucial
role of big money foundations behind protest groups such as Black lives Matter is that there is
a far more complex agenda driving the protests now destabilizing cities across America.
The
role of tax-exempt foundations tied to the fortunes of the greatest industrial and financial
companies such as Rockefeller, Ford, Kellogg, Hewlett and Soros says that there is a far deeper
and far more sinister agenda to current disturbances than spontaneous outrage would
suggest.
***
Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your
email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in
politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics,
exclusively for the online magazine "New
Eastern Outlook" where this article was originally published. He is a Research Associate of
the Centre for Research on Globalization.
"... This book is like a bad date where the other person is accusing you of all of your failures, and when you try to make up, to do better, to understand more, to be fully engaged as an ally, you are continually pushed away. ..."
"... 99% of the problem is created by 1% of whites who other whites don't see. ..."
"... The same would be true for misogyny. 99% of rapes are caused by 1% of perps, and the 99% of innocent men don't see it because the perps aren't harassing them. ..."
"... This book is riddled with historical inaccuracies, such as black women being denied the vote until 1964, poor arguments, and a lack of any decent citations. This book did inspire me though. If something this bad can be published, anyone can write a book. ..."
"... According to this author, those that are identified as white (not necessarily those who identify AS white) are guilty of racism and must be prepared to be tongue-lashed by her. It is curious that somehow denigrating a person by their skin color is not racist when done by a person of the same appearance. It is a popular book for those that need more of a reason to feel bad about themselves. ..."
"... If you're seeking insight on how to understand and fight against escalating exploitation and oppression by the US ruling class, look elsewhere. This book is a polemic, a work of guilt-tripping ideology, given to sweeping and unsubstantiated statements about "white supremacy" and "racism". If this book were to use the religious language of the Puritans, "whiteness" would be the "original sin". ..."
"... DiAngelo, like Tim Wise, Cheryl Matias and others, is a professional race-baiting huckster. She makes a living traveling the country telling white people how awful they are, how morally superior she is, and how if white people pay ridiculously expensive fees to attend her lectures, they too can be a "good" white person like her. ..."
I am very reluctant to give
a negative review, especially when the author is trying to be helpful. In places the author has correctly diagnosed a number of
genuine problems.
Merely being non-racist isn't good enough, because you end up as a bystander when a bully is beating up on a victim; both covering
your eyes and ears and refusing to acknowledge what the victim (of racism) is telling you is happening to them.
If you haven't been a victim you cannot fully understand being a victim. If you haven't experienced the pervasiveness and constancy
of negative bias both coming from other groups and even influencing your own view of yourself – then you will never completely
comprehend. So in one respect a white person cannot truly say, "I get it."
Neither can you ever do enough to win a gold star and say you've done "enough" as long as racism exists.
It's like the Talmudic maxim: "you will never finish perfecting the world, but you are never free to stop trying."
If the book stopped there, it would be fine. Perhaps even excellent.
But I give this book one star because it makes the problem worse.
This book is like a bad date where the other person is accusing you of all of your failures, and when you try to make up, to
do better, to understand more, to be fully engaged as an ally, you are continually pushed away.
And then you are told to "breathe" and calm down. Surely you are getting upset and proving the thesis!
Except that's not what's happening.
Yes, whites don't see racism because they aren't a target of it. If you aren't a racist, then you don't hang around racists.
And if you aren't black then you don't have it hurled in your face. 99% of the problem is created by 1% of whites who other whites
don't see.
The same would be true for misogyny. 99% of rapes are caused by 1% of perps, and the 99% of innocent men don't see it because
the perps aren't harassing them.
So men need to listen without being defensive. Whites need to listen without being defensive. It's wrong to say, "But I'm not
doing it" as if that will make it go away.
But it's also wrong to say that the non-harassing men or the non-harassing whites are guilty BECAUSE of their innocence.
No, they aren't being bad. They are being clueless. And instead of being accused they need to be engaged.
Especially when they WANT to listen and be helpful.
In short, if someone wants to be your friend – let them.
This book doesn't invite engagement and doesn't let the non-involved to become involved in affirmatively fighting racism. It
turns a lot of would be allies away.
Ultimately, it's self defeating.
We need more people aware of racism. We need more people fighting racism. We need the majority engaged in helping the minority,
rather than being turned away.
I'd give this book five stars if it were half as long. But it's the flawed existentialism that makes this book a hindrance
to people who should be friends, and would be friends, if they were allowed to be. >
This book is riddled with historical inaccuracies, such as black women being denied the vote until 1964, poor arguments,
and a lack of any decent citations. This book did inspire me though. If something this bad can be published, anyone can write
a book.
According to this author, those that are identified as white (not necessarily those who identify AS white)
are guilty of racism and must be prepared to be tongue-lashed by her. It is curious that somehow denigrating a person by their
skin color is not racist when done by a person of the same appearance. It is a popular book for those that need more of a reason
to feel bad about themselves.
Ironically, the subject is timely and through reading other sources of information on institutionalized racism, I have noticed
many examples of this. The articles were well written and effective in that I was not made to feel that anything I did or said
was automatically suspect and therefore invalid. A state of paralysis is not one from which change can occur.
If you're seeking insight on how to understand and fight against escalating exploitation and oppression
by the US ruling class, look elsewhere. This book is a polemic, a work of guilt-tripping ideology, given to sweeping and unsubstantiated
statements about "white supremacy" and "racism". If this book were to use the religious language of the Puritans, "whiteness"
would be the "original sin".
As a Unitarian-Universalist I am appalled by such ideology because I am dedicated to our first principle -"the inherent worth
and dignity of every person", regardless of social status or category. This includes not just "people of color" but the legions
of "whites" who have suffered terribly despite the supposed safety net of "whiteness". Unfortunately, ruling class whites are
often condescending toward working class whites, and this book is no exception. When they are not ignored or treated rudely (DiAngelo)
they may be called names like "deplorables" (Hillary Clinton) or even then unbelievably insulting "white trash" (the title of
a book by Nancy Isenberg). And just think of all the derogatory names that are used for the homeless, who again are mostly white.
Here's an example of DiAngelo's rude disrespect: An Italian American explained "that once Italians were once considered black
and discriminated against, so didn't I think white people experience racism too?" (p. 12). Instead of acknowledging and honoring
the truth he spoke from his own lived experience, she changes the topic, accusing him of "refusing to examine his own whiteness
today". This is typical of the mental gymnastics that DiAngelo employs to evade the truths she hears that are "inconvenient" for
her ideology of "whiteness". In an earlier era Irish Americans could have said the same thing, and this has always been a felt-in-the-gut
truth for poor whites.
Although DiAngelo has an academic background, she unapologetically violates the canons of good scholarship, See, for example,
the third essay of Todd Eklof in "The Gadfly Papers", or the work of Johnathan Church, such as his article in Areo magazine on
how "white-fragility-theory-mistakes-correlation-for-causation". Instead she conveys an attitude of self-assured superiority,
a provocateur who declares herself to be proud of her "identity politics", dismissing criticism from "whites" as a product of
their "white supremacy" or "racism" and labeling it "white fragility". Brain-washed by such ideology, she is oblivious to how
insulting terms the like "white supremacy" fuel the cultural wars, hence political gridlock, hence giving a free reign to predatory
capitalism and escalating inequality.
DiAngelo never acknowledges how her ideology "whiteness" serves two unsavory political purposes. The most obvious one is to
divert attention from the color-blind nature of today's predatory capitalism – how vulnerable whites are targeted far more than
blacks simply because the whites have so much more to lose. The second becomes obvious once we reflect on the time-tested strategy
of ruling classes to stay in power by "divide and conquer" tactics aimed at the populace. In the US, "racism" itself was born
as such a construct in the aftermath of Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, serving to divide white and black workers and turning the latter
into dehumanized slaves. Today the cultural wars comprise a similar divide and conquer strategy, but this time dividing the white
ruling class from its working class to create political gridlock. Here I use the term "ruling class" in its broadest sense, as
roughly the top 10% to 20% of the population in income or wealth who have a college education, while using the rough definition
of "working class" as those without a college degree, or about 2/3 of the population. As we learned in 2016, the political consequences
can be dire indeed when progressives abandon their fundamental principles and the working class to embrace the self-serving strategies
of the ruling class. >
DiAngelo, like Tim Wise, Cheryl Matias and others, is a professional race-baiting huckster. She makes a living traveling the country
telling white people how awful they are, how morally superior she is, and how if white people pay ridiculously expensive fees
to attend her lectures, they too can be a "good" white person like her.
Why is it so hard to talk about race? Because any discussion where you are cast immediately as the villain likely isn't going
to be a very productive conversation.
What is white fragility? White fragility is standing up for yourself against unsubstantiated charges of racism. If a black
or brown person makes an ignorant statement regarding you, your family, your life's experiences or whatever, and you defend yourself
as any normal person would....well, that's white fragility. What you should be doing is to just take it. Admit you are born evil
as a member of a race of pale face demons and accept the charges that are being leveled against you. That's being woke!
You see, anti-racism activism used to be directed towards people who were......you know, racist? However, that changed over
the last couple decades as more virulent strains of post-modernism and cultural Marxism infected the movement. Now, the idea of
all white people being racist is championed and supported within the annals of academia. You don't have to nurse a hatred of black
or brown people to be racist. All you have to be is white. You have a plethora of extremely vague terms regarding supposed "systems"
and "structures" that are poorly defined and not nearly as well illustrated as intended. Indeed, the definition of racism was
surreptitiously changed to a "correct" redefinition of a whites-only enterprise of power plus privilege while other ideologies
such as feminism curiously maintained their original dictionary description.
Critical race theorists have insisted that white privilege, whiteness studies, etc. are not meant to foster a sense of a guilt
and shame amongst white people. It's blatantly clear when you peel back the layers that that is precisely the end goal. They tell
you that you - the individual white person - are part of the problem. You have to admit your original sin, and then you'll come
into the light. They don't do a very good job hiding their true intentions.
And what's up with so-called "allyship"? Allies are supposed to be members of a mutual pact, not a one-sided arrangement of
praise and apologies.
On the subject of fragility, I find it very amusing and ironic when you consider that if DiAngelo or Wise were to speak at
a college campus or university, they won't have to worry about a horde of angry white students disrupting their lectures, storming
the lecture halls, pulling fire alarms, drowning out the speakers with chants, etc. Fragility is rife on campus life these days.
Safe spaces, protests over racist incidents that turn out to be hoaxes perpetrated by the "victims", and so on. Who are the real
fragile ones here?
At the end of the day, DiAngelo's end goal won't be realized. Sure, coastal white liberals who are down with the cause might
think that people like her are creating change, but it's simply not working. Far too many white people whose lives aren't full
of ease and privilege will not take kindly to such dumb bigotry wrapped up in fancy academic terms. Critical race theory, like
so many related "isms" in the social justice lexicon, is simply building up its own funeral pyre. >
1.0 out of 5 stars
mostly worthless Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2018 Awful. The author deludes herself, thinking her white and
black readers have no idea how to relate, live on different planets, and, that DiAngelo is required to be their guide. She acts
like African-Americans speak a different language. She doesn't understand the concept of individuality very well, either, gneralizing
about everyone. "African-Americans are sensitive about their hair." IF this book represents "progress," we're in bad shape. 839
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1.0 out of 5 stars
Nonsense Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2018 This book is for guilty feeling white folks and blacks who need
to gravitate to oppression. There is no white fragility. What leads people out of the left is commercial trash like this. There
is no fear in white or anyone else about anything. There is no open forum and there is no out let for an open discussion anyway.
The generalization is what allows whites to leave the left. There should be a book about racial healing and not foster disorder
by identity politics. >
1.0 out of 5 stars
Counterproductive to overcoming racism Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2019 The author of this book inadvertently
does a great job of showing the inherent racism, absence of logic and fact, insanity, self-righteousness, arrogance, and hypocrisy
of the viewpoint she is trying to sell.
First, I will give praise where it is due. I found the author's call to hear people out when they talk about how it feels to
be a minority in our country helpful and necessary. I also think her advice to really examine each of our own hearts when we are
confronted with another person offering criticism where our personal behavior toward people of color is insensitive, or revealing
of a feeling of superiority was very good.
The rest of the book, however, was bewildering. The author opens with an attack on all white people. She redefines racism as
something only white people can do. Whites are racist, not because of their thoughts or actions, but because of their very existence.
She says whites ordered their civilization primarily to place themselves in positions of power for the purpose of keeping people
of color down all over the globe. The author hates the two core beliefs that western civilization is built on – individualism
(the inherent value of the individual), and meritocracy (the idea that people should succeed based on talent and effort). She
says we will never be free of racism as she defined it, until we abolish these two core beliefs.
Naturally, not everyone is going to agree with a blanket application of guilt to all whites, or the author's view of history
(which is scantly substantiated), or view of western civilization (which many would view as having offered at least some good
things to the world). But if you disagree with any of this, you are said to be displaying your "white fragility."
The author lists many arguments that people have posed to her to demonstrate that they aren't racist, but are not acceptable
in her view. One of these is "I'm not racist because I'm married to a person of color." Unfortunately, the author says, that even
if you chose a person of color to be your life partner and have brought forth children of color into the world with them, you
are still a racist. As a white mother in a blended family, I would argue that many people view interracial marriage as one of
the best evidences of an integrated society that has got over its racism. The accusation that by my existence, I oppress my husband
and children is completely bizarre and hurtful. This is perhaps the most self-righteous, dictatorial, contradictory, blind, and
illogical thing in this book.
The author also talks a lot about how whites treat blacks like children who can't think for themselves. She references portrayal
of black characters in movies and TV as evidence. There is some justification for this, especially decades ago, but sensitivity
on this issue has improved a whole lot. Given her disdain for whites treating blacks like they can't think for themselves, I was
shocked when she chose to criticize Martin Luther King's famous quote: "I have a dream that my children will one day live in a
nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but the content of their character." She said that the vision
of that great black leader is actually not the correct view. She explains that it only reinforces the core beliefs of western
society of individualism and meritocracy, which it turn keeps blacks down, and whites in power. It is absolutely arrogant and
hypocritical for this white author to say that Martin Luther King, who gave his life fighting for his vision, didn't really mean
what he said.
There are many other things in this book that are problematic, but those were the worst for me. I can only hope that most people
who read this book will see the hatred, racism, and self-righteousness that echo through every page. From the author's account
of her mission to share the message of collective white guilt and hatred of western society with others, it's not being well received.
And that's very, very encouraging. 516 people found this helpful
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1.0 out of 5 stars
Shallow, repetitive and condescending Reviewed in the United States on November 2, 2019
Verified Purchase DiAngelo spends much of this book re-defining both racist and white supremacist in broader non-standard
ways, then arguing that we live in a thoroughly racist and white supremacist world based on her definitions. She defines White
Fragility as anything short of enthusiastic agreement with all of her arguments, as if her understanding of things is objectively
true. She makes many assertions repeatedly, but she doesn't back them up with detailed supporting arguments. Question her, remain
silent, or leave the conversation and you're exhibiting your white fragility It's a neat rhetorical trick. Check out How to Be
an Anti-Racist by Ibrham Kendi for a much more thoughtful treatment of race issues. >
1.0 out of 5 stars
Perfect for the avarage whiny college liberal Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2019
Verified Purchase Probably has some important message, but I couldn't bear reading more than 70 pages, which, to be fair,
is more than half the book, but that's all I needed for my college class. Maybe more people would be interested in reading it
if the author used another title, and realized that insulting the people she was trying to help probably isn't the best course
of action. 283 people found this helpful
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1.0 out of 5 stars
Nauseating Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2019 If you love looking at everything in the world through the lens of
race and racism, if you find race and racism endlessly fascinating, then you'll love this book. If you're one of the many who've
realized that there are more healthy ways of looking at life and more constructive ways to talk about how to get along, you'll
likely find this one of the most nauseating books ever written.
Robin DiAngelo is drunk on her own power as a "diversity trainer," and she won't rest until every last white person has admitted
their guilt and submitted to her authority. If you resist, if you show signs that you think her whole obsession is unseemly or
downright disgusting, it will only confirm that she is right about you and that your only hope is to admit your own hopelessness
and follow her down, down, down. For there is no uplift in this religion she and her fellow fanatics have created, there is only
an ever-growing awareness of guilt, and how our "white fragility" in the face of this guilt is our deepest sin.
Just take a look at some quotes from the book's first pages:
"(W)hiteness is at once the means of dominance, the end to which dominance points, and the point of dominance, too, which,
in its purest form, in its greatest fantasy, never ends" (ix).
Is this true? Well, you'll just have to take her word for it, she's the expert, unless your "white fragility" still won't let
you.
"(A)ny gains we have made so far have come through identity politics" (xiii).
Really? Tell that to Martin Luther King Jr, who spoke the language of common humanity and united decent people across the country
to demand equal rights for black people in America, well before the language of "identity politics" (which is purely group-based)
came into vogue.
Ironically, as an example of how great "identity politics" has been, she writes, "a key issue in the 2016 presidential election
was the white working class" (xiv), without noting that the left's promotion of "identity politics" is what caused these "white
working class" Americans, most of whom voted for Obama, twice, to finally start identifying with their own "white identity" and
vote for Trump.
She speaks of "white identity" and "the white voice" as if these are factual things that unite all "white" people, but, to
promote herself and the dire need of her book, says her own white voice is "one of the many voices needed to solve the overall
puzzle" (xv), because "racism is deeply complex and nuanced, and given this, we can never consider our learning to be complete
or finished" (xv) -- lucky for those like her who make a career out of promoting these toxic ideas, eh?
If you can still stomach it, I'll leave you with a few more choice nuggets from the Introduction, but I recommend you imagine
her reading them at you accompanied by a laugh track, which can actually make it kind of fun:
Ours is "a society in which racial categories have profound meaning" (xvi); North America is "deeply separate and unequal by
race" (1); "Socialized into a deeply internalized sense of superiority, that we [white people] either are unaware of or can never
admit to ourselves, we become highly fragile in conversations about race," resulting in "behaviors such as argumentation, silence,
and withdrawal from the stress-inducing situation" (2); "If, however, I understand racism as a system into which I was socialized,
I can receive feedback on my problematic racial patterns as a helpful way to support my learning and growth .Such moments can
be experienced as something valuable, even if temporarily painful, only after we accept that racism is unavoidable and that it
is impossible to completely escape having developed problematic racial assumptions and behaviors" (5); "I believe that white progressives
cause the most daily damage to people of color" because "our defensiveness and certitude make it virtually impossible to explain
to us how we do so" (5); "This book does not attempt to provide the solution to racism .My goal is to make visible how one aspect
of white sensibility continues to hold racism in place: white fragility" (5).
I think she takes the easy way out by telling stories of white people pounding their fist or getting upset when talking about
racism. I don't know if that happened but you can't take one individuals reaction and make it seem like it is how white people
react if the mention of racism comes up.
I can understand that she needs to sell books. I was just hoping for something different. 210 people found this helpful
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Pseudo intellectual book that is obviously flawed.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Pseudo intellectual book that is obviously flawed. Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2020
Verified Purchase It only takes a few pages in this book to recognize that Ms. DiAngelo does not really understand what she
is talking about. I took detailed notes as I read about her logical fallacies, misunderstandings, etc. and every page is littered
with notes. This book is shockingly poorly reasoned and it is terrifying that enough Americans think this is a good book to move
it to the NYT best seller list. I wish I hadn't purchased the book as I hate to give credibility to the authors incompetence.
The author starts by demonstrating that she has no idea what the concept of "individualism" is. She argues that individualism
means thinking that racial groups and other groups do not matter. However, individualism is quite the opposite. Individualism
arose due to discrimination against people based on their religion, race, etc. and was the idea that we should not discriminate
against people based on their group category. Ms. Diangelo shockingly completely misunderstands this. Thus, every time she talks
about "individualism" I cannot help but facepalm because she sounds so foolish.
She also does not understand the fallacy of equivocation. She often throws out the word "racism" or "racist." However, the
power of the word "racism" comes from the definition where we define it as someone who dislikes another race. We rightfully judge
someone who dislikes another race to be evil. Ms. Diangelo seems to want to pull the power from this definition and then redefine
racism to be merely existing as a white person in our society. But, this does not work. In fact, her equivocation is in fact racist
(aka evil). She is trying to imply that merely existing as a white person means you are racist and thereby demean white people.
I could go page by page explaining her logical missteps, but that would take a whole book. Instead, I would suggest if you
do decide to read this book, turn on your critical thinking skills and really analyze what she is saying. You will be shocked
by how poorly reasoned this book is. 188 people found this helpful
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1.0 out of 5 stars
The worst book on race relations ever written. Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2018 When I read about how Blacks
oppress their own people and it benefits Whites, my stomach turned. Excuse me, as a White woman it is not to my benefit, to societies
benefit, and I'm not responsibility for the decisions of others. The book would have people believe Blacks are oppressed and it
is the fault of Whites. We have many successful Blacks in this country. A Black man was POTUS and the entire family is successful,
they are not alone. This book is inflammatory towards race relations. 308 people found this helpful
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It's repetitive and redundant, repetitive and redundant
1.0 out of 5 stars
It's repetitive and redundant, repetitive and redundant Reviewed in the United States on October 14, 2019
Verified Purchase I'm going to forge on and try to finish this book. I'm in the second chapter and it is very repetitive and
redundant. Like another reviewer said, she paints a picture of damned if you do and damned if you don't. It's hard for me to keep
going because of her repetitiveness. 219 people found this helpful
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1.0 out of 5 stars
Is there even a conversation? Reviewed in the United States on April 24, 2020
Verified Purchase This book comes off as being enlightened, and I will admit that it draws attention to important matters
regarding race. My issue is that the author comes off as incredibly arrogant and the book sounds very self-congratulatory. For
example, she states "Because I am seen as somewhat more racially aware from other whites...." this comes off as both arrogant
and presumptuous. Even though she acknowledges her whiteness, it seems somewhat ironic that a white woman is writing an authoritative
text on race- talk about the white savior! I am interested in race studies, and I have encountered many texts that address the
issue of race and racism, which is an undeniably difficult topic, but those sources did not come off as arrogant and pedantic
as this. 183 people found this helpful
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1.0 out of 5 stars
Oh look, more division Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2019 Probably shouldn't insult those you wish to share common
ground. Racism is wrong. Period. But the idea of insulting whites as "fragile" I get that's a spicy title to raise eyebrows but
in 2019, in a country where people of any race or ethnicity or sex can do basically anything in this country, why push this narrative
further?! We need to all unite. My dad did when he married a Hispanic immigrant and made me. Is my dad fragile? He's white. Is
he racist by default? The preconceived stereotypes here are egregious and inforgiveable. More click bait social media sensical,
identity political, trash. 261 people found this helpful
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How come she is a consultant and trainer on racial issues???
1.0 out of 5 stars
How come she is a consultant and trainer on racial issues??? Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2020
Verified Purchase As an Asian immigrant who grew up in Europe and who have recently relocated to the USA, I find the racial
division of "white" and "people of color" ridiculous and discriminatory. This kind of division invalidates people's personal experiences.
I find it WRONG to be put in the same category as African Americans, Asian Americans or Latin Americans who were born and raised
in the US!
Mrs. Robin DiAngelo and her points of view only consolidate this wrong categorization. At the beginning of the book, she states
that "white" people get their "white supremacist" ideas from mainstream media. And then, in the end, she advises them to seek
out information on the racial topic "from books, websites, films, and other available sources."
Moreover, she continuously proved herself as an ignorant, racist person. How come she is a consultant and trainer on racial issues???
173 people found this helpful
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Cult indoctrination for those unwilling think forbidden thoughts
1.0 out of 5 stars
Cult indoctrination for those unwilling think forbidden thoughts Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2018 The racial
gap narrative takes a new low. The ever evolving progressive conspiracy theory to explain the black v. white attainment gap changes
again. It's no longer lack of access, it's no longer basic prejudice, instead it is now a cultural milieu that you can't ever
escape. Beg for forgiveness and flog yourself at the new church without salvation. A nation that benefits it's founding stocks'
values, the idea behind most all nation states, is now castigated. Well, who is this nation supposed to serve? The traditional
gate keepers don't hold weight anymore, the forbidden secrets why the world is the way it is are out there and these silly narratives
aren't going to last much longer. 274 people found this helpful
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The topic is one that we must be willing to explore, to engage in conversation about and to strive to be better, but what does
better mean? Diangelo argues that we as human beings all have prejudices, which is unavoidable. Also, that their effect on how
we consume and process information is also unavoidable. So then is better simply about outward behavior and our ability to actually
change how we think limited?
There are important points in this book that should be contemplated and drive understanding and awareness. Most notably, if
you grew up as part of the group that was in power (race, gender, religion, etc.) then you were conditioned to think of your group
as the norm and every other group as the exception. It is just like when you think everyone else has an accent, but you do not.
Likewise, those messages were reinforced in literature, art, movies, television and advertising. If you grew up not a member of
the group in power, those messages were relentless that you were not the norm or not the ideal. Think about what that does to
your psyche on either side of the equation.
The definition used in this book are that prejudice is at the individual level in the mind of a single person, which may or
may not be accompanied by an outward act driven by that prejudiced mindset called discrimination. Racism is when those prejudiced
thoughts, decisions and acts are committed overtly or tacitly by the racial group holding the power and form a systemic set of
challenges to anyone not in that group. This is all fine and a very logical definition set to explore the topic.
The shortcoming in the analysis of Diangelo is that she fails to articulate that by her own premise that everyone has inescapable
prejudiced thoughts by virtue of being a human being, that any racial group who happens to be in a position of power is therefore
inescapably going to be racist. She says that any group other than whites cannot be racist because they do not have the power.
However, in doing so she disregards the work of Pierre Bourdieu's, which she leverages in chapter 7 as he asserts that "field",
the social context including who has power and who does not, is not a universal homogenous force, but rather has macro and micro
fields in which different groups have the power in different settings. Therefore, by her own definitions, there would be macro
and micro fields of racism benefitting whichever race is in power in that field setting.
By failing to hold true to her own premises, she relegates racism to a white problem rather than to human problem. In doing
so her writing style is often accusatory, argumentative, pandering and self-fulfilling in that if you want to explore her assumptions,
premises and context, then you are labeled a racist. This is very much in the style of the cable news network echo chamber where
a real dialogue cannot exist because you are shouted down at the slightest sign of anything less than 100% agreement. Further,
rather than exploring deeper into these topics, Diangelo stretches about 20 pages of content into 154 pages through exponential
repetition of the same few points and lists of examples of racism, results of racism and assumptions underlying racism, which
are also bloated with repetitive remarks.
The issue isn't white fragility, it is human fragility in that we as humans are predisposed to attribute success to our own
efforts and failures to outside forces and likewise the failures of others to their efforts, yet their successes to outside forces.
Anything that challenges this way of thinking strikes at human fragility regardless of your race. 163 people found this helpful
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1.0 out of 5 stars
Not worth reading Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2019
Verified Purchase This book was poorly reasoned, without any references or factual backup for what are essentially her personal
opinions. 188 people found this helpful
A growing number of Americans feel that the political
climate is preventing them from sharing their views, according to a new
survey
by the Cato Institute.
The institute surveyed 2,000 Americans and found that 62 percent are reluctant to share their views due to the political climate.
In 2017, 58 percent of people surveyed expressed the same opinion.
Republicans are much more likely to be afraid to share their opinions than Democrats and independents, the survey found. More
than 3 in 4 Republicans -- 77 percent -- said they are afraid to share their views compared to 52 percent of the Democrats and 59
percent of the independents.
The reluctance to share one's views appears to grow as respondents shift right on the political spectrum, the survey found.
Compared to 2017, the reluctance to share one's views increased across the political spectrum. Liberals, moderates, and conservatives
were all 7 percent more likely to be afraid to express their opinions.
The increase in reluctance was more pronounced among strong liberals, rising 12 points to 42 percent, compared to 2017. Reluctance
to share their views among strong conservatives notched up 1 point to 77 percent.
"This suggests that it's not necessarily just one particular set of views that has moved outside of acceptable public discourse,"
Emily Ekins, research fellow and director of polling at the Cato Institute, wrote about the survey.
"Instead these results are more consistent with a 'walking on eggshells' thesis that people increasingly fear a wide range
of political views could offend others or negatively impact themselves."
The self censorship cut across demographic groups as well, with roughly 2 in 3 Latino Americans and white Americans and nearly
half of African Americans holding views they are afraid to share. More men (65 percent) than women (59 percent) said the political
climate prevents them from speaking their mind.
The Cato Institute also polled respondents on whether they would support firing someone if they had donated to President Donald
Trump or presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
The cancel culture manifested stronger among staunch
liberals than staunch conservatives. Half of all the people who identified as staunch liberals said they would support firing Trump
donors, compared to 36 percent of staunch conservatives who would support firing someone who donated to Biden.
Nearly a third of Americans said they are afraid that their political views may cost them their jobs or career opportunities.
In line with the results on cancel culture, the fear was slightly stronger among conservatives (34 percent) than liberals (31 percent).
The "cancel culture" proponents who actually do the most damage (as opposed to twitter
spats and maybe blocking speakers from a college campus here and there) are the pro-israel
types. frum's presence alone brings up that question and i'm sure greenwald's positions on
palestine were a major factor. chomsky is ostensibly anti-imperialist and anti-racist but
let's not forget he lived on a kibbutz for a while and still thinks the two state solution is
a good idea whereas BDS supposedly isn't. greenwald has also backed taibbi to some degree in
his anti-cancel stance so that didn't help.
"The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful
ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy."
This sacred cow of illusion is being threatened from all directions it seems. Democracy is
great for whoever owns it, and whoever owns the media owns democracy. A cow well worth
milking.
@the pair:
"the "cancel culture" proponents who actually do the most damage (as opposed to twitter spats
and maybe blocking speakers from a college campus here and there) are the pro-israel types.
frum's presence alone brings up that question and i'm sure greenwald's positions on palestine
were a major factor"
Exactly this! Greenwald has been a major irritant to many of the letters signatories. You
mentioned Frum, but also it would include the hyper hypocritical "cancel culture" queen
herslf: Ms. Bari Weiss - who recently 'resigned' from her last pro Zionist platform: the
NYT's.
Jonathan Cook has one of the most cogent, nuanced and accurate critiques of this Harpers
letter at than anyone I've read. Very long and well reasoned, with three additional updates
too. He takes many of the signers to task, especially in their noted over-whelming support
for Israel, for which many of them are now 'suffering' criticism
....It is easy to agree with the letter's generalised argument for tolerance and free and
fair debate. But the reality is that many of those who signed are utter hypocrites, who have
shown precisely zero commitment to free speech, either in their words or in their
deeds...
....The array of signatories is actually more troubling than reassuring. If we lived in a
more just world, some of those signing – like Frum, a former speechwriter for President
George W Bush, and Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former US State Department official – would
be facing a reckoning before a Hague war crimes tribunal for their roles in promoting
"interventions" in Iraq and Libya respectively, not being held up as champions of free
speech.
....Chomsky signed because he has been a lifelong and consistent defender of the right to
free speech, even for those with appalling opinions such as Holocaust denial.
...Chomsky, importantly, is defending free speech for all, because he correctly
understands that the powerful are only too keen to find justifications to silence those who
challenge their power. Elites protect free speech only in so far as it serves their interests
in dominating the public space..."
And then Cook says, most importantly:
...By contrast, most of the rest of those who signed – the rightwingers and the
centrists – are interested in free speech for themselves and those like them. They care
about protecting free speech only in so far as it allows them to continue dominating the
public space with their views – something they were only too used to until a few years
ago, before social media started to level the playing field a little...."
While Sullivan does not share the Likudnik politics of Weiss, he enjoys some notable
institutional and personal links to her political network. As the former editor of The New
Republic , Sullivan worked under the direction of the magazine's fanatically pro-Israel
former publisher, Marty Peretz, who has since relocated to Tel Aviv .
Peretz's daughter, Evgenia, published a fawning
profile of Weiss in Vanity Fair in April 2019, portraying her as an inspiring new
talent who was "genuinely fueled by curiosity, the desire to connect, to cross boundaries and
try out new things."
During the time Sullivan and Peretz ran The New Republic , the magazine was
funded by the
pro-Israel businessman Roger Hertog. Hertog also plowed his fortune
into the Shalem Center to launch a training institute for young pro-Israel pundits in 2002.
Among the first interns to pass through the Shalem training school was a Columbia University
student named Bari Weiss. (Weiss' editor at the Times , Rubenstein, had also been
involved in the Hertog Foundation) .
Whether or not Weiss plans to join Sullivan at a new outlet for disgruntled anti-SJW [social
justice warrior] centrists, the circumstances surrounding her self-expulsion reveal her
resignation letter as an insincere whitewash.
Besides the possibility that Weiss' departure was a PR stunt, there is the fact that she has
spent a large portion of her adult life working to cancel Palestinian academics and left-wing
politicians while howling about the rise of a totalitarian "cancel culture."
Self-Styled Free Thinker Campaigns to Silence Left-Wing Dissenters
Before Bari Weiss branded herself as an avatar of free thought, she established herself as
the queen of a particular kind of cancel culture. The 36-year-old pundit has dedicated a
significant portion of her adult life to destroying the careers of critics of Israel, tarring
them as anti-Semites, and carrying out the kind of defamation campaigns that would result in
her targets losing their jobs.
The pundit has
shown a particular obsession with Palestinian-American scholar Joseph Massad and the New
York City-based Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour. Other targets have included Keith
Ellison, the Minnesota Attorney General who was the first Muslim elected to Congress, and Rep.
Tulsi Gabbard, an ardent opponent of U.S. regime change wars.
There is also ample evidence that while at Columbia University, Weiss helped bring down
the dean of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, Lisa Anderson, for inviting
Iran's then-President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad to speak on campus. Anderson's son has pointed to
Weiss as a key factor in her resignation:
In her resignation letter, Weiss found space to castigate the Times for publishing
an interview with renowned African-American author Alice Walker , whom she casually defamed as "a proud
anti-Semite who believes in lizard Illuminati."
Weiss also flexed her bona fides as a proud neoconservative activist, saying she was
"honored" to have given the world's most prestigious media platform to a slew of regime-change
activists from countries targeted by the U.S. national security for overthrow, including
Venezuela, Iran, and Hong Kong, along with notorious Islamophobe Ayaan
Hirsi Ali and Chloe Valdary – a fellow Israel lobby product who previously
worked as an intern for Bret Stephens .
In her three-year career as an editor of the opinion section of the newspaper of record,
Weiss devoted a significant chunk of her columns to attacking her left-wing critics, while
complaining endlessly of the haters in her Twitter mentions (which is risible given her
lamentation in her resignation letter that "Twitter has become [the Times '] ultimate
editor").
In her 2019 book, Weiss condemned the pro-Palestine left as a whole. She insisted the idea
that Zionism is a colonialist and racist movement is an anti-Semitic "Soviet conspiracy;" that
the UK Labour Party under leader Jeremy Corbyn was a "hub of Jew hatred," and that "leftist
anti-Semites" are "more insidious and perhaps existentially dangerous" than far-right
"Hitlerian anti-Semites."
It is worth reviewing this historical record to show how Cancel Queen Bari Weiss' apparent
change of heart on cancel culture might more appropriately be described as an opportunist
career choice.
Campaigns to Cancel Massad, Sarsour & Ellison
In her 2019 book "How to Fight Anti-Semitism," Weiss revived her condemnations of Massad,
whom she first targeted at Columbia University after interning at the Hertog-funded Shalem
Center.
Weiss also argued that New York University (NYU) was
rife with anti-Semitism . Her proof? An individual student was told some stupid
anti-Semitic comments, and -- much more disconcertingly for Weiss – "In December 2018,
the student government successfully passed a BDS resolution," and "NYU gave the President's
Service Award, the school's highest honor, to Students for Justice in Palestine."
Massad was hardly the only victim of Bari Weiss' compulsive cancel culture campaigns. The
neoconservative pundit wrote an entire New York Times column in 2017 dedicated to
trying to cancel
Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour .
Rapping progressives over the knuckles for purportedly "embracing hate," Weiss characterized
Sarsour as an unhinged anti-Semite because of her criticism of the colonialist Zionist
movement, and worked to disrupt the Women's March, which Sarsour helped to found.
Then in a tag-team cancel campaign with feverishly pro-war CNN host Jake Tapper (who
has his own questionable
history with
racial issues ), they portrayed Sarsour as an extremist for expressing support for former
Black Panther leader Assata Shakur, whom they jointly demonized as a "cop-killer fugitive in
Cuba."
Next, Weiss turned her sights on the Democratic Attorney General of Minnesota Keith Ellison,
claiming in a 2017
column that he had a "long history of defending and working with anti-Semites."
Attempts to Cancel Tulsi Gabbard
Bari Weiss' cancelation rampage continued without a moment of self-reflection.
In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan in January 2019, the
pundit tried to cancel Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard because of her work advocating
against the international proxy war on Syria.
When Rogan mentioned Gabbard's name, Weiss scoffed that the congresswoman is "monstrous,"
smearing her an "Assad toady," in reference to the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. Confused,
Rogan asked Weiss what exactly that meant. The bumbling New York Times pundit could
not answer, unable to define or even spell the insult.
Claims 'Leftist Anti-Semitism' Worse Than 'Hitlerian Anti-Semitism'
Bari Weiss' most extreme views on Israel-Palestine and the left can be seen in her 2019 book
How to Fight Anti-Semitism . In this tome, the neoconservative writer set out to
cancel the pro-Palestinian anti-racist left as a whole by arguing that supposed "leftist
anti-Semitism" is more dangerous than "Hitlerian anti-Semitism."
Weiss wrote:
"Hitlerian anti-Semitism announces its intentions unequivocally. But leftist
anti-Semitism, like communism itself, pretends to be the opposition of what it actually
is.
Because of the easy way it can be smuggled into the mainstream and manipulate us –
who doesn't seek justice and progress? who doesn't want a universal brotherhood of man?
– anti-Semitism that originates on the political left is more insidious and perhaps
existentially dangerous [than on the right]."
When she says "leftist anti-Semitism," Weiss almost invariably means progressive criticism
of Israeli apartheid, racism, and brutality against the indigenous Palestinian population.
If that wasn't already obvious, Weiss spelled it out:
"If you want to see the stakes, just look across the pond, where Jeremy Corbyn, an
anti-Semite, has successfully transformed one of the country's great parties into a hub of
Jew hatred.
Corbynism is not confined to the U.K. Right now in America, leftists who share Corbyn's
worldview are building grassroots movements and establishing factions with the Democratic
Party that are suspiciously unskeptical of genocidal terrorist groups like Hamas and actively
hostile to Jewish power and the state of Israel."
In her book, Weiss insisted the idea that Zionism is a colonialist and racist movement is
the product of a
"Soviet conspiracy" spread by USSR in order to destroy Israel. She expressly ignored the
words of the father of Zionism himself, Theodor Herzl, who wrote that Zionism "is a colonial idea"
and requested help from British colonialists, including colonial master Cecil Rhodes.
"Progressives have, knowingly or unknowingly, embraced the Soviet lie that Israel is a
colonialist outpost that should be opposed," Weiss lamented.
"In the most elite spaces across the country, people declare, unthinkingly, that Israel is a
racist state and that Zionism is racism, without realizing that they are participating in a
Soviet conspiracy, without realizing that they are aligning themselves with the greatest mass
murderers in modern history," she bemoaned.
Not mincing her words, Weiss concluded, "When anti-Zionism becomes a normative political
position, active anti-Semitism becomes the norm."
With these passages, it became clear that her How to Fight Anti-Semitism was a
book-length attempt to cancel anti-Zionists as a whole, by conflating their opposition to
Israeli apartheid as anti-Semitism.
Anyone who disputes that Israel is "a political and historical miracle" is secretly a Jew
hater, Weiss has argued. She effused, "That I can walk the streets of Tel Aviv today as a
feminist woman in a tank top," she marveled, "that it is a free and liberated society in the
middle of the Middle East, is an achievement so great that it is often hard for many people to
grasp."
As with much of the content Weiss produces, her gushing praise for Israel's supposedly
"liberated society" could have been lifted from a propaganda pamphlet distributed on campus by
a pro-Israel lobbying outfit. But it was never quality writing or original ideas that won Weiss
the attention she sought, and which has virtually ensured she will be "cancelled" into a new,
high-profile position in the mainstream commentariat.
Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including
best-selling " Republican
Gomorrah ," " Goliath ," "
The
Fifty One Day War ," and " The Management of
Savagery ." He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video
reports, and several documentaries, including "Killing Gaza ." Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in
2015 to shine a journalistic light on America's state of perpetual war and its dangerous
domestic repercussions.
Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The
Grayzone , and the producer of the " Moderate Rebels" podcast, which he co-hosts with editor
Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @ BenjaminNorton .
The establishment's massive propaganda campaigns and psyops CANCEL the truth or make it
unrecognizable via coloring and half-truths. Russiagate, White Helmets, Skripals, MH-17,
Integrity Initiative, Assange, Russian Bounties & remaining in Afghanistan, "China
virus", hydroxyChloroquine, etc.
The Trump Administration has CANCELED entire countries via terminating peace treaties,
imposing sanctions, covert war, and conducting a propaganda war.
Where is the outrage from writers, artists, and academics about THAT?
They trot out old power dynamics and pathetically shadowbox authority. Yet they're the ones
who are in charge now. Former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss. Credit: HBO/YouTube
Screenshot
If only we could all lead pampered lives like Salman Rushdie.
Last week, several dozen writers and intellectuals published a letter in
Harper's Magazine that condemned -- though they never used the term explicitly -- cancel
culture. The signatories included Margaret Atwood and Martin Amis, Gloria Steinem and Steven
Pinker, while the missive itself was a fairly routine statement of classical liberal
principles. "The free exchange of information and ideas," it reads, "the lifeblood of a liberal
society, is daily becoming more constricted." Also: "The restriction of debate, whether by a
repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes
everyone less capable of democratic participation." The political right under Donald Trump long
ago grew illiberal, the signers say. Now the resistance to Trump and the online woke are going
the same way.
What happened next was utterly predictable. Conservatives, despite being denounced as
illiberal in the very first paragraph, did not attack the letter, demand consequences for the
signers, sneer themselves into post-anoxic comas on Twitter; mostly they praised the document
and passed it around. The left, meanwhile, began a four-alarm hissy fit that's somehow still
ongoing today. The letter was accused of fanning a moral panic. Cancel culture was dismissed as
fake news, a repackaging of normal political passions and activism into a counterfeit
bogey.
Mostly though, progressives just crammed the letter into their usual class war. The
signatories were tagged as elites desperately trying to safeguard their privilege, in contrast
to their targets, the huddled masses of the Twitter woke. The letter's critics, as
Michael Hobbes of the Huffington Post put it, were "ordinary people" who lack
"institutional power" and "point out the failures of those institutions." A woke response
letter published at The
Objective, which appears to have been penned by an illiterate -- it may be that the real
divide here is between those who can write and those who can't -- claimed of the first letter,
"The content of the letter also does not deal with the problem of power: who has it and who
does not." It continued, " Harper's has decided to bestow its platform not to
marginalized people but to people who already have large followings and plenty of opportunities
to make their views heard."
A few words on all this.
First, you don't get more "marginalized" than having a fatwa declared against your novel by
a national government, becoming the target of riots and book burnings, being forced into
hiding, and dodging repeated attempts on your life, as happened to Salman Rushdie, one of the
Harper's signers. Another, Garry Kasparov, was exiled from Russia for supporting
democracy. To be sure, this hardly compares to the tribulations undergone by your average
Huffington Post staffer, who risks ennui-filled glances from her coworkers every time she
shares the wrong Handmaid's Tale GIF. But it does seem like Rushdie and Kasparov might
know something about standing up for free expression. It may even be that we should consider
what they have to say.
https://imasdk.googleapis.com/js/core/bridge3.396.0_en.html#goog_424665540 00:13 / 00:59
00:00 Next Video × Next Video J.d. Vance Remarks On A New Direction For Pro-worker,
Pro-family Conservatism, Tac Gala, 5-2019 Cancel Autoplay is paused
Second and more importantly, the reaction to the letter demonstrates just how oblivious the
left has become to its own power. Back in the 1960s, to be a leftist was to be countercultural,
smashing monogamy and fighting the man. Today's left wants that same rebellious aura, except
that they've since marched through just about every major institution. Academia swallows whole
their assumptions; so does the publishing industry, many corporate boards, much of the media,
the federal bureaucracy, a healthy section of the internet. Those who speak out against the
Harper's letter are thus not remotely "marginalized"; they are heard loudly and often.
Many of them have blue Twitter checkmarks, that garish amulet of the modern elite. This is how
power works now: money and rank matter less than they used to, visibility and influence count
for more. And by those yardsticks, the woke are plenty powerful.
This is why a social media mob -- an aggregate of all that power -- can be just as coercive,
just as authoritarian, as an out-of-control government. Yet the wokesters refuse to see this.
They act as though by participating in cancel culture, they're merely exercising their own free
speech, their right to critique authority, a far cry from the state shutting someone up. In
this, they make a mistake usually committed by only the most doctrinaire libertarians. There's
a tendency among some libertarians to divide the world into the private sector and the public
sector. And right on -- that bifurcation is healthy and necessary, even if these are imprecise
and overlapping terms. But emblazon that line too brightly and the division can become a moral
one. You start treating everything on the public side as suspect and worthy of criticism, while
rationalizing away the bad on the private side. That's just business being business ,
you say. You come to view Google, for example, as not just free to do as it likes, but
fundamentally justified in its actions by mere virtue of its epistemological geography in the
private sector.
The woke left is now falling into a similar trap. So long as the government isn't kicking
down anyone's door, they say, there's no censorship at work, since their angry letters and
boycotts all fall under the umbrella of private expression. Yet such private expression can be
a bullying force all its own. A professor who risks being fired from his position and
permanently stigmatized on the internet because he says the wrong thing is not really free to
speak his mind. He may not receive a cease-and-desist order in the mail, but he's still being
suppressed. Yet the left has willfully blindfolded itself to this. Over at The New
Republic , Osita Nwanevu
notes, "When a speaker is denied or when staffers at a publication argue that something
should not have been published, the rights of the parties in question haven't been
violated in any way." That's technically true. But the result can be close to the same. The
idea that the spirit of free speech can't be squashed by private actors, by a culture or a
crowd, is absurd.
From here, the woke left issues another denial: cancel culture doesn't really exist.
What the Harper's letter frets about, they say, is just a smattering of incidents that
hardly amount to a pattern. Really? A University of Chicago economist was recently
put on leave for criticizing Black Lives Matter and opposing efforts to defund police
departments. A political data analyst was fired for
tweeting out academic research that found that riots in 1968 helped Richard Nixon. A
children's author was sacked for saying she
stood with J.K. Rowling . A novelist
stopped her own book from being published after it was attacked for depicting intra-racial
slavery.
Another novelist
had his book yanked for the crime of being set during the Kosovo War. Two professors at
Yale
stepped down as heads of a residential college because they'd suggested the university
didn't need a policy against offensive Halloween costumes. A New York Review of Books
editor resigned for
publishing an essay by a broadcaster who'd been acquitted of sexual assault.
Conservatives like Charles Murray, Christina Hoff Sommers, and Ben Shapiro have been regularly
attacked and disrupted when they try to speak on college campuses. How much more needs to
happen before we're allowed to acknowledge a trend? This isn't prudent maintenance of the
Overton window, weeding out genuine hatred and bigotry; it's the enforcement of the whims of a
neighing, infantile mob. Its aim isn't to inquire and improve, but to ossify and silence.
The Harper's signers thus aren't "the real illiberals," as the woke have asserted.
Nothing in their letter suggests they want to use their power to silence their critics. What
they desire is the opposite: an end to hair-trigger punishments that have sent a chill through
our intellectual life. It shouldn't be remotely surprising that artists and academics support
free expression. What should really flabbergast us is that the consensus in bohemia and the
ivory tower is tilting in the other direction. As I wrap up this column, Bari Weiss, one of the
Harper's signers, has just left the New York Times , citing a hostile woke work
environment. Steven Pinker, another signatory, has narrowly
survived an attempt to cancel him. The new orthodoxy is intolerant, hell-bent on enforcing
its views, pathetically shadowboxing an elite it long ago joined. It threatens nothing less
than our essential ability to communicate. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Matt Purple is a senior editor at The American Conservative .
Well, it should be very obvious now what you shouldn't do - throw a Trump against them.
It just revs them up more, and his group are too radical in their own way to win away the
middle from them.
"When you cannot attack then defend. When you cannot defend then retreat." Retreat.
Curse them with victory. Without a force like Trump to allow them to unify a group under
their banner they'll make innumerable enemies, as these shots over their bow indicate, who
no longer have any reason to tolerate them whatsoever.
I believe the left and their elite enablers are intentionally trying to provoke a
response from middle America, so they can crack down. So far, they have been stuck
blue-on-blue. Not only that, but when they do win, they lose, as you said. There is
learning.
They are also rapidly accelerating the number of people they alienate.
A friend of mine was a Navy SEAL. He said sometimes, you just keep quiet and watch.
Most of the victims of cancel culture seem to fall into two groups: 1. people who share
most of the ideology of the cancellers but differ on one or two points, and 2.
old-fashioned (usually older and white) liberals who don't realize that the rules of the
game have changed.
JK Rowling, for instance, belongs to group 1: she was a flaming social liberal who
enthusiastically accepted all liberal assumptions until she found one she couldn't accept.
Examples of group 2 include the dismissed Poetry Foundation officials, and the museum
curator in San Francisco who was canned because he said he wasn't going to discriminate
against white artists.
It is much harder to cancel religious fundamentalists, ethno-nationalists,
neo-reactionaries, and other anti-liberals because they normally refuse to play the liberal
game (correctly seeing at as rigged against them), and therefore they often develop
strategies for surviving "off the grid" of the standard media and institutions.
Your last paragraph isn't true. Many of the Charlottesville people were canceled. They
lost their jobs and lost their income when they were sued for damages. Most of these people
weren't actually living off the grid.
True, but I'm thinking of people like Vox Day (who started his own publishing house) and
the various alt-right/ alt-left/ alt-whatever types who got kicked off YouTube and wound up
at other platforms. "Build your own platforms" is a principle with many of them, because
they assume they will eventually get kicked off of someone else's.
I hate Trump and didn't vote for him in 2016 but am going to this year because the left
has gone off the deep end. And does not recognize how extreme it is. Won't matter though
since I live in Western Washington. But other people must feel the same way.
Exactly the same way. I did not vote for him in 2016 and began his term set firmly in
the anti-Trump camp. I no longer 'hate' Trump (remember he is not a politician but a real
estate developer): nothing he does, not a single tweet, nor even their sum total, comes
anywhere close to the damage the current left is inflicting. He is the dam holding back
total chaos.
" A woke response letter published at The Objective, which appears to have been penned
by an illiterate -- it may be that the real divide here is between those who can write and
those who can't -- claimed of the first letter,"
This is a totally unnecessary and mean spirited line.
I don't think criticizing poor grammar or whatever is necessarily meanspirited. But I
expected that the ensuing quote would illustrate what was "illiterate" about that letter.
As far as I can tell, the alleged illiterate managed to communicate in writing, thereby
disproving Purple's assessment.
If the cancel culture continues, at some point a critical mass will be reached, and the
cancellees will be numerous enough to set up their own media and institutions.
Has anyone ever noticed that many people who seem to be participating in this cancelling
behavior are the groups of people (e.g., black, LGBTQ) who are/have typically been
vulnerable to "cancellation" efforts of a more aggressive kind? Is it possible that is more
of an "offense as defense" situation?
I think this is to some degree the case, yes. Ezra Klein makes the point that the
argument of the letter writers would go down much better if they acknowledged the way that
marginalized people have been cancelled forever, and had some active concern for addressing
the ways that some of the debates that the woke want to shut down have real implications
for the rights and safety of marginalized groups.
I also think that given the climate right now people have the mindset that they have to
take what they can get. There is nothing substantive being done to reunite separated
families at the border, but they can make the Goya people uncomfortable for standing with
those in power for example. If marginalized people felt like their concerns were being
taken seriously by those in power, the value of these boycotts and disruption would likely
be reduced.
Yes, cancel culture, like riots, are to some degree the language of the unheard. There
are plenty of cases where I think cancel culture was the best outlet available, since our
justice system has failed so hard to adequately address injustices. #metoo is a huge
example of this, and was effective and appropriate when it was bringing town powerful
people with multiple accusers (though the real takedowns of #metoo happened less on twitter
and more through journalism). But, of course, this kind of tool is extremely dangerous and
unweildy and is only appropriate for exceptional cases.
What I can't stand are the people that decry cancel culture AND think the status quo is
okay for marginalized people (or for the way sexual assualt is handled in this country). If
you don't address injustice, people will find a way to be heard, and you probably won't end
up liking it.
Again, I say this as someone deeply critical of cancel culture.
Well, the elites have no real problem with cancel culture, especially when they can fund
its purveyors to keep people distracted from demanding health care and living wages for
all, among other things that would actually help a lot more people than tearing down some
statues.
Is it just me, or has most of the Fortune 500 come through the last few years of cancel
culture fairly unscathed?
It's just not that simple to analyze others' psycology. It's so easy to say "if they
REALLY believed X, then they would Y." Liberals would say that if conservatives really
cared about safety they'd be pro-gun control and if they really cared about life they would
be anti-capital punishment and for the social safety net.
I think the defund movement is a ridiculous pipe dream, up there with how libertarians
think we'd all just get along if government got out of the way. But it's bad logic, not bad
faith, that leads them to think this way--they are very, very much motivated by safety.
Given all the comments on Mr. Dreher's post concerning the ousting of Bari Weiss, I
would have placed a different picture for the article... Nobody seems to shed a tear for
that particular person, who appears to have gotten on her position for being a very
skillful at cancel culture herself...
Not sure why this took me so long to figure out. But the reason the woke feel like this
letter is trying to silence them is clear. While the letter in no way trying to silence
anyone, it IS in a very real way, asking to strip the woke of recently achieved power. No
one wants to give up power, and the wokes' power is of a special kind since, as laid out in
this piece, it's power the woke wield while denying they even have it. Someone trying to
take your power away does feel like being silenced.
It's a conundrum I do sympathize with in this sense: no, the Twitter woke are not
marginalized withing the social-political sphere. However, they are still championing and
often made up of the representatives of genuinely marginalized groups who still face
descrimination and threats to their real, actual safety in their daily lives. This is
particularly true of trans people, a deeply vulnerable group who get nothing but ridicule,
political attacks, and efforts to restrict their rights from the right and even from the
center. That is why trans activists are the most militant, their people are the most
vulnerable. So there's this sense that the powerless finally have some power to wield, and
now they are being asked to give it up. None of that changes the dangerousness of the power
held by a righteous mob; it IS illiberal, and and the woke need to (haha) wake up to that
fact and do better.
Transactivists, unlike actual transpeople 20 years ago, are NOT deeply vulnerable, at
all. They are the most militant because half of the males are autogynephiliacs who
literally fetishize transgressing into women's spaces. Their rape and death threats and
endless sexualizing of their transition to their new "identity" and forcing other women
(especially lesbians) to validate their false identity is the behavior of heterosexual
males WITH POWER. This is the most dangerous movement in the past 30 years, causing untold
damage to children and teens. I'm sorry you don't see that and hope you can open your eyes
and ears to alternative media like Women Are Human, Feminist Current, and 4th Wave Now to
learn the facts.
Reddit just cancelled several gender critical groups--international support groups
including for teens going the painful process of "detransitioning"--because saying trans
women are not biological women is "hate speech." Meanwhile Reddit keeps up its militant
mens rights groups and several rape and teen focused pornography sites, because that
apparently isn't hate speech. If you can't see the power dynamics here, I don't know how to
help you.
To elaborate: do you even know any trans people? Because I know plenty. And follow some
on the internet, and read their writings. I hate to break it to you, but they are just
people. Like any people, there are some unsavory people amongst them, of course. But you
are deeply, deeply misguided in your sources, and are slandering people that just want to
live their lives in peace. Due to the difficulty they have doing that, yes, some are rather
militant in their activism; I don't support that, but I do support trans people and trans
rights.
By the way, as an intellectually curious person who doesn't want to miss things, I've
looked into the "gender critical" world, and it's not the least bit convincing. I have a
certain amount of sympathy for women who feel like trans-women are encroaching on their
spaces (they're wrong though, their reactions are a lot like male gatekeeping as women gain
rights), but I have no sympathy whatsoever for the abusive, dehumanizing language about
trans people that is all over those sites (just as I have no sympathy whatsoever for trans
people that throw abuse at detractors).
Your first comment was pretty good but you are wrong on some points here;
1) Biological men don't belong in women's safe spaces.
2) The trans movement is doing enormous damage to children and teens who are sucked up into
its ideology and making (or having their parents make) irreversible choices. See the
suppressed study on Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria by Lisa Littman among others.
There are in addition increasing numbers of people who are transitioning and then coming to
regret their choice, though granted others claim it rescued them. How anyone can ignore the
hige downside of this phenomenon is beyond me.
Thank you. The left today, at least in its extremes, seems to borrow more from the
underworld than from an essay -erred or not -of human reason. The problem is that these
elements are seeping into the left's main current like a weaponized infiltration.
Liberal elites are so steeped in virtue-signaling that they have convinced themselves
that anything they do is just and righteous. That leaves no room for discussion or
disagreement, and opens the door for cancellation. The real "sin" of the letters is to see
in illiberal cancel culture the mirror image of the intolerance that liberals have been
attributing to Trump. It's obvious now that the atmosphere around the left has become
brutally authoritarian, and the responses to Weiss's letter and the Harper's letter
demonstrate this. Both letters contain necessary critiques of the intolerance of cancel
culture/wokeness, but liberal critics chose to ignore the critiques and focus on the
characters of the signers. This is woke culture in action. Using the typical academic ad
hominem attack, liberal critics opted to kill the messengers because they feared the
message.
If the "woke" are just a tiny number of "four alarm hissy-fit" throwers, how can they
cancel anything?
How is what they are doing any different than boycotts, plenty of which have been
orchestrated by so-called conservatives?
And this author's example of Rushdie as marginalized by having a well publicized fatwa
against him issued makes me conclude that he really doesn't understand the concept.
Boycotts are powerful tools--when weilded effectively. But it's hard to do so. You have
to have a LOT of widespread support, organization, and commitment, to make a boycott work.
Plenty of attempted boycotts fail because there just aren't enough people committed to them
for a long enough time. This is a built-in, self-limiting component of them.
Cancellation, on the other hand, requires little more than thought-free keyboard
warriorism. Canecllation has sometimes involved the woke targetting small local businesses,
where the woke mob can be enough to send a business under, as in the Denver yoga studio
case:
https://coloradosun.com/202... I, personally, think the bar for boycotting a local
business should be FAR higher than what is exhibited here.
Cancel culture wokeness will never "make America good again." The more we indulge that
foul spirit, the more diseased and debased our culture becomes. We don't need more mob
vitality; we need more reasonable actors.
While I basically agree with you on the substance of your piece, I resent dismissing the
left of the 60s as wanting to end monogamy--really? I was part of that movement and I can
tell you we were against the Vietnam War and for the end of segregation, and recognizing
the crimes against people of color, native peoples, the poor, sexual minorities and women's
rights and, above all, the right to free speech. We wanted the values we expounded
thunderously around the world to actually mean something. We weren't all united on
everything but pansexualism was a very minor issue among a very small minority of our
number.
I don't recognize the current "left" as leftist at all but precisely who they appear to
be effete cultural snobs from the upper-middle-class who resemble the "know-nothings",
Maoists and have little to do with class-struggle.
"Nothing in their letter suggests they want to use their power to silence their
critics."
There is an entire paragraph devoted to suggesting that some of the signatories of the
original letter - specifically Bari Weiss, Katha Pollitt, Emily Yoffe, Anne-Marie Slaughter
and Cary Nelson - have tried to use their power to silence their critics, and provided
links to the allegations. I didn't actually follow the links, but the suggestion is
certainly there.
"A woke response letter published at The Objective, which appears to have been penned by
an illiterate -- it may be that the real divide here is between those who can write and
those who can't -- claimed of the first letter..."
I didn't find the Observer letter illiterate, at all, myself.
has anyone commenting here actually been targeted by cancel culture?
I have and it's not fun having to talk to HR about why your boss is receiving anonymous
letters trying to get you fired for stuff said online. in my case it was the celebratory tone
I took upon hearing John McCain had died that inspired this gutless piece of shit to act
IRL.
even the New York Times got a piece of the action by threatening to name the blogger
behind Slate Star Codex.
this is from New Statesman:
Scott Alexander are the real first and middle names of the author, a psychiatrist based in
California, who had kept his full identity secret. However, as he revealed in a post this
week, a New York Times tech reporter decided to write about his blog and the community
around it, and intended to publish Scott Alexander's full name. In response, Alexander
decided to close down Slate Star Codex, claiming that revealing his identity would
undermine his ability to treat his patients, and expose him to death threats, something he
said he had already received in small numbers.
The response on Twitter, where many of the blog's readers often dwell, has been one of
outrage. Luminaries such as Steven Pinker described it as a "tragedy on the blogosphere".
Others such as software inventor and investor Paul Graham talked of cancelling their NYT
subscriptions. The title's "threat" has been widely described as "doxxing", a term more
commonly used for posting online the personal details of an individual behind a social
media account than publishing someone's name in a newspaper story.
by making things personal and consequential in real life, cancel culture is fanning
divisive flames that could one day turn into a real civil conflagration.
Does Cancel Culture intersect with Woke? The former's not mentioned in
this fascinating essay , but the latter is and appears to deserve some unpacking beyond
what Crooke provides.
As for the letter, it's way overdue by 40+ years. I recall reading Bloom's The Closing
of the American Mind and Christopher Lasch's Culture of Narcissism where they say
much the same.
What's most irksome are the lies that now substitute for discourse--Trump or someone from
his admin lies, then the WaPost, NY Times, MSNBC, Fox, and others fire back with their lies.
And to top everything off--There's ZERO accountability: people who merit "canceling" continue
to lie and commit massive fraud.
The Chinese and Russian Foreign Ministers just jointly agreed in a rare published account
of their phone conversation that the Outlaw US Empire " has lost its sense of reason,
morality and credibility .
Yes, they were specifically referring to the government, but I'd include the Empire's
institutions as well. In the face of that reality, the letter is worse than a joke.
The other turned out to be a 'Novelist'. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zia_Ha
"Rahman was a college scholar at Balliol College,[6] one of the constituent colleges of
Oxford University, and received a first class honours degree in mathematics,[7] before
completing further studies in mathematics, economics, and law at the Maximilianeum, a
foundation for gifted students, and Munich, Cambridge, and Yale universities. He briefly
worked as an investment banker for Goldman Sachs in New York before practising as a corporate
lawyer and then as an international human rights lawyer with the Open Society Foundations
focusing on grand corruption in Africa.[8] He has also worked as an anti-corruption activist
for Transparency International in South Asia.[9]"
Perhaps a small sample but Culture Cancel and Crooke's Woke most likely intersect, perhaps
being one and the same.
Just look at the cost of smartphone that they display at the riots and you instantly get a
certain impression about income of their parents
Notable quotes:
"... And their radicalism would be resisted, Lasch predicted, not by the upper reaches of society, or the leaders of Big Philanthropy or the Corporate Billionaires. These latter, rather, would be its facilitators and financiers." ..."
A section quoted by Crooke in the piece karlof1 linked to
"A social revolution that would be pushed forward by radical children of the bourgeoisie.
Their leaders would have almost nothing to say about poverty or unemployment. Their demands
would be centred on utopian ideals: diversity and racial justice – ideals pursued with
the fervour of an abstract, millenarian ideology.
And their radicalism would be resisted, Lasch predicted, not by the upper reaches of
society, or the leaders of Big Philanthropy or the Corporate Billionaires. These latter,
rather, would be its facilitators and financiers."
And Crooke's thoughts..
"So, what can we make of all this? The US has suddenly exploded into, on the one hand,
culture cancelation, and on the other, into silent seething at the lawlessness, and at all
the statues toppled. It is a nation becoming angrier, and edging towards violence.
One segment of the country believes that America is inherently and institutionally
racist, and incapable of self-correcting its flawed founding principles – absent the
required chemotherapy to kill-off the deadly mutated cells of its past history, traditions
and customs.
Another, affirms those principles that underlay America's 'golden age'; which made
America great; and which, in their view, are precisely those qualities which can make it
great again."
The USA and GB actually implement caste system. That's what job quota means.
Notable quotes:
"... It might seem divisive to compare different groups, but attainment in education and in life is relative and if we're to help the worst off, we have to know who they are. We should help everyone who needs it -- but it is vital to be able to compare groups to know who's falling behind, relative to their peers. In the UK, Bangladeshi-Brits earn 20 percent less than whites on average, for instance, but those with Indian heritage are likely to earn 12 percent more. Black Britons on average earn 9 percent less, but Chinese earn 30 percent more. What these differences tell us is that employers aren't systematically discriminating between people on the basis of their skin color, and that we have to look elsewhere to see the roots of inequality. ..."
"... Poor Chinese girls (that is to say, those who qualify for free school meals) do better than rich white children. ..."
"... But, interestingly, the ethnic group least likely to get into university are whites. With the sole exception of Gypsy/Roma, every ethnic group attends university at a higher rate than the white British and, of the white British who do attend, most are middle class and 57 percent are female. The least likely group to go on to higher education are poor white boys. Just 13 percent of them go on to higher education, less than any black or Asian group. ..."
"... Angus Deaton, a Nobel Laureate based at Princeton University, came up with the phrase 'deaths of despair' when he looked at the demographics of those suffering from alcoholism, depression and drug abuse. Suicides among whites, he found, was soaring and those who took their own lives tended to be poor and low-educated. His recently-published book on the subject ( Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism , co-written with Anne Case) tells the devastating story of what he calls 'the decline of white working-class lives over the last half-century'. ..."
You can argue about the merits of pulling down statues, but it's hard to make the case that mass protests serve no useful purpose.
At the very least, they provoke debate and draw attention to uncomfortable topics that it might otherwise be easier to ignore. The
recent protests have forced everyone to have difficult discussions about race, class, poverty and attainment. Any serious examination
of the statistics shows that we're pretty far from equal, but what the figures also show is that it's wrong-headed and damaging to
lump very different groups together.
In these discussions politicians often lazily assume that all BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) people are the same, and
that all white groups are equally privileged. But a proper look at the data shows not just that there are striking difference within
BAME groups, but that the very worst-performing group of all are white working-class boys -- the forgotten demographic .
It might seem divisive to compare different groups, but attainment in education and in life is relative and if we're to help
the worst off, we have to know who they are. We should help everyone who needs it -- but it is vital to be able to compare groups
to know who's falling behind, relative to their peers. In the UK, Bangladeshi-Brits earn 20 percent less than whites on average,
for instance, but those with Indian heritage are likely to earn 12 percent more. Black Britons on average earn 9 percent less, but
Chinese earn 30 percent more. What these differences tell us is that employers aren't systematically discriminating between people
on the basis of their skin color, and that we have to look elsewhere to see the roots of inequality.
Ucas, the British university admissions service, can provide unique insight into these issues: it is the only outfit in the
world to gather detailed information on all university applicants, including their age, gender, neighborhood and school type. This
is collected along with data on who applied for which courses and who was accepted, and it is renewed in huge detail every year.
Much of the data shows predictable results: there is a gap between rich and poor, as you might expect in a UK state system where
the best schools tend to be located in the most expensive areas. But there are surprising discoveries too: nearly half the children
eligible for free school meals in inner London go on to higher education, but in the country outside London as a whole it is just
26 percent.
Black African British children outperform white children, whereas black Caribbean children tend to do worse. Poor Chinese
girls (that is to say, those who qualify for free school meals) do better than rich white children.
But, interestingly, the ethnic group least likely to get into university are whites. With the sole exception of Gypsy/Roma,
every ethnic group attends university at a higher rate than the white British and, of the white British who do attend, most are middle
class and 57 percent are female. The least likely group to go on to higher education are poor white boys. Just 13 percent of them
go on to higher education, less than any black or Asian group.
This is a trend that can also be seen in the GCSE data; only 17 percent of white British pupils eligible for free school meals
achieve a strong pass in English and maths. Students categorized as Bangladeshi, Black African and Indian are more than twice as
likely to do so. In 2007, the state sector saw 23 percent of black students go on to higher education; this was true for 22 percent
of whites. So about the same. But at the last count, in 2018, the gap had widened to 11 points (41 percent for black students, 30
percent for whites). The children of the white working class are falling away from their peers, in danger of becoming lost.
Going to university is not the golden ticket it once was, but it requires stupefying naivety to believe that seven out of eight
poor white boys take a sober look at the economics of higher education and choose to set up their own businesses instead. The trail
of hard evidence runs cold once they leave school, but the prospects for those who can barely read and write are dreadful and we
can get some idea of the consequences by looking at the 'left behind' areas where unemployment, crime and 'deaths of despair' are
significantly higher than the national average.
Angus Deaton, a Nobel Laureate based at Princeton University, came up with the phrase 'deaths of despair' when he looked at
the demographics of those suffering from alcoholism, depression and drug abuse. Suicides among whites, he found, was soaring and
those who took their own lives tended to be poor and low-educated. His recently-published book on the subject (
Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism , co-written
with Anne Case) tells the devastating story of what he calls 'the decline of white working-class lives over the last half-century'.
Yet while white working-class males are the largest disadvantaged minority, their cause is the least fashionable. In the intersectional
pyramid of victimhood, white males are at the bottom, tarnished by ideas of 'toxic masculinity' and 'white privilege' despite the
fact that in Britain class has always been the most significant indicator of true privilege. It's worrying, then, that any who attempt
'positive action' on behalf of poor white boys face a hostile reaction. Last year, Dulwich and Winchester colleges turned down a
bequest of more than £1 million ($1.25 million) because the donor, Sir Bryan Thwaites, wanted the money ring-fenced for scholarships
for white working-class boys. Peter Lampl, founder of the Sutton Trust, a charity whose stated mission is to improve social mobility,
described Thwaites's offer as 'obnoxious'.
When Ben Bradley, the Conservative MP for Mansfield, tried to ask an 'Equalities' question about working-class white boys in parliament
earlier this year, he was turned down by the Table Office because they do not have any 'protected characteristics'. The concept of
'protected characteristics' was wheeled into UK law by Harriet Harman's Equality Act, 10 years ago, and the Tories, then in opposition,
took the rare step of voting for it. The nine protected characteristics include 'race', 'sex' and 'sexual orientation', but the Table
Office is not alone in interpreting these as 'non-white', 'female' and 'gay'.
Under the Equality Act, 'positive discrimination' remains technically unlawful, but the barely indistinguishable concept of 'positive
action' is explicitly legal. Firms cannot have quotas, but they can set targets. Employers cannot refuse to look at job applications
from people who lack protected characteristics, but by stating that 'applications are particularly welcome' from BAME, female or
LBGTQ+ candidates they send a message that some need not apply.
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In 2016 the BBC pledged that half its workforce and leadership would be female by 2020 despite less than 40 percent of Britain's
full-time workers being women. It also set an 8 percent target for LGBT employees, although only around 2 percent of the population
identify as LGBT. This target has been comfortably exceeded, as has been the target of having 15 percent of employees from a BAME
background. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests last month, the corporation raised this target to 20 per cent.
The BBC admits that people from 'low and intermediate income households' are hugely underrepresented in its workforce. But what
does it do about it? Earlier this month Oxford University proudly reported that it was making 'steady progress' in its efforts to
make its campuses 'representative of wider society'. Of its most recent intake of British students, only 14 percent came from the
poorest 40 percent of households.
This fits a pattern: at a push, we can hear acknowledgement of the 'poor white male' problem. But that's as far as it ever goes.
The underperformance of white boys and men is not considered to be a problem worth solving. When figures come out showing the stunning
attainment gaps between boys and girls, the interest lasts for about a day. 'It always got a few headlines,' says Mary Curnock Cook,
the former head of Ucas. 'Where it never got any traction at all was in policy-making in government. I began to think that the subject
of white boys is just too difficult for them, given the politicization of feminism and women's equality.'
When I asked a teacher why white working-class boys have fallen so far behind, he gave me a short answer: girls are better behaved
and immigrant parents are stricter. This is a generalization but nonetheless interesting: if it is the case that parenting is the
problem, then it's not clear how much the UK government can do. Perhaps the reluctance to discuss the subject stems from fear that
such a discussion would lead to difficult territory about family structure, quality of parenting and -- in short -- culture. Perhaps
politicians think it better to let the problem fester, and the children suffer, than to risk discussing it.
Last month, the British government announced that its commission on racial inequality would include an examination into the underperformance
of working-class white boys at schools. Will it look deep into the causes? It might look at recent studies that suggest poor reading
levels in schools is a huge part of the problem. And it might ask whether 'positive action' in the name of diversity has left white
working-class boys behind.
The Michigan State University administration pressured professor Stephen Hsu to resign from
his position as vice president of research and innovation because he touted research that found
police are not more likely to shoot black Americans. The study found:
"The race of a police officer did not predict the race of the citizen shot. In other
words, black officers were just as likely to shoot black citizens as white officers
were."
For political reasons, the authors of the study sought its retraction.
The U.S. Department of Education warned UCLA that it may impose fines for improperly and
abusively targeting white professor Lt. Col. W. Ajax Peris for disciplinary action over his use
of the n-word while reading to his class Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham
Jail" that contained the expressions "when your first name becomes "n----r," your middle name
becomes "boy" (however old you are). Referring to white civil rights activists King wrote,
"They have languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of
policemen who view them as 'dirty n----r-lovers.'"
Boston University is considering changing the name of its mascot Rhett because of his link
to "Gone with the Wind." Almost 4,000 Rutgers University students signed a petition to rename
campus buildings Hardenbergh Hall, Frelinghuysen Hall, and Milledoler Hall because these men
were slave owners . University of Arkansas students petitioned to remove a statue of J. William
Fulbright because he was a segregationist who opposed the Brown v. Board of Education that
ruled against school segregation.
The suppression of free speech and ideas by the elite is nothing new. It has a long ugly
history. Galileo Galilei was a 17th-century Italian astronomer, physicist, and engineer,
sometimes called "father of modern physics." The Catholic Church and other scientists of his
day believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. Galileo offered evidence that the
Earth traveled around the sun -- heliocentrism. That made him "vehemently suspect of heresy"
and was forced to recant and sentenced to formal imprisonment at the pleasure of the
Inquisition and was later commuted to house arrest for the rest of his life.
Much of today's totalitarianism, promotion of hate and not to mention outright stupidity,
has its roots on college campuses. Sources that report on some of the more egregious forms of
the abandonment of free inquiry, hate, and stupidity at our colleges are College Reform and
College Fix.
Prof. William S. Penn, who was a Distinguished Faculty Award recipient at Michigan State
University in 2003, and a two-time winner of the prestigious Stephen Crane Prize for Fiction,
explained to his students, "This country still is full of closet racists." He said:
"Republicans are not a majority in this country anymore. They are a bunch of dead white
people. Or dying white people."
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The public has recently been treated to the term -- white privilege. Colleges have long-held
courses and seminars on "whiteness." One college even has a course titled "Abolition of
Whiteness." According to some academic intellectuals, whites enjoy advantages that non-whites
do not. They earn a higher income and reside in better housing, and their children go to better
schools and achieve more. Based on that idea, Asian Americans have more white privilege than
white people. And, on a personal note, my daughter has more white privilege than probably 95%
of white Americans.
Evidence of how stupid college ideas find their way into the public arena can be seen on our
daily news. Don Lemon, a CNN anchorman, said, "We have to stop demonizing people and realize
the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right,
and we have to start doing something about them." Steven Clifford, a former King Broadcasting
CEO, said, "I will be leading a great movement to prohibit straight white males, who I believe
supported Donald Trump by about 85 percent, from exercising the franchise (to vote), and I
think that will save our democracy."
As George Orwell said, "Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them."
If the stupid ideas of academic intellectuals remained on college campuses and did not
infect the rest of society, they might be a source of entertainment -- much like a circus.
The Talmud is the absolute paradigm for racial supremacy, intolerance and hatred, a
satanic bible compiled for psychopaths and pedophiles. Anyone who burns it gets my vote for a
statue.
Our website traffic easily broke all records for the month of June, and these high levels
have now continued into July, suggesting that the huge rise produced by the initial wave of
Black Lives Matters protests may be more than temporary. It appears that many new readers first
discovered our alternative webzine at that point, and quite a few have stayed on as regular
visitors.
A longer-term factor that may be strengthening our position is the unprecedented wave of
ideological purges that have swept our country since early June, with prominent figures in the
intellectual and media firmaments being especially hard hit. When opinion-leaders become
fearful of uttering even slightly controversial words, they either grow silent or only mouth
the most saccharine homilies, thereby forcing many of their erstwhile readers to look elsewhere
for more candid discussions. And our own webzine is about as "elsewhere" as one could possibly
get.
Take, for example, the New York Times , more than ever our national newspaper of
record. For the last few years, one of its top figures had been Editorial Page Editor James
Bennet, who had previously run The Atlantic , and he was widely considered a leading
candidate to assume the same position at the Gray Lady after next year's scheduled retirement
of the current top editor. Indeed, with his brother serving as U.S. Senator from Colorado --
and a serious if second-rank presidential candidate -- the Lifestyle section of the
Washington Post had already hailed
the Bennet brothers as the potential saviors of the American establishment.
But then his paper published an op-ed by an influential Republican senator endorsing
President Trump's call for a harsh crackdown on riots and looting, and a Twitter mob of
outraged junior Times staffers organized a revolt. The mission of the NYT Opinion
Pages is obviously to provide a diversity of opinions, but Bennet
was quickly purged .
A similar fate befell the highly-regarded longtime editor of the Philadelphia
Inquirer after his
paper ran a headline considered insufficiently respectful to black rioters . Michigan State
University researchers had raised doubts about the accepted narrative of black deaths at the
hands of police, and physicist Stephen Hsu, the Senior Vice President who had supported their
work,
was forced to resign his administrative position as a consequence.
Numerous other figures of lesser rank have been purged, their careers and livelihoods
destroyed for Tweeting
out a phrase such as "All Lives Matter," whose current classification as "hate speech"
might have stunned even George Orwell. Or perhaps a spouse or other close relative
had denounced the black rioters . The standards of acceptable discourse are changing so
rapidly that positions which were completely innocuous just a few weeks ago have suddenly
become controversial or even forbidden, with punishments sometimes inflicted on a retroactive
basis.
I am hardly alone in viewing this situation with great concern. Just last week, some 150
prominent American writers, academics, and intellectuals published an open
letter in Harpers expressing their grave concern over protecting our freedom of
speech and thought.
Admittedly, the credentials of some of the names on the list
were rather doubtful . After all, David Frum and various hard-core Neocons had themselves
led the effort to purge from the media all critics of Bush's disastrous Iraq War, and more
recently they have continued to do with same with regard to our irrational hostility towards
Putin's Russia. But the principled histories of other signers such as Noam Chomsky partially
compensated for the inclusion of such unpleasant opportunists.
Although the Harpers statement attracted many stars of our liberal firmament,
apparently few people read Harpers these days, with its website traffic being just a
tenth of our own. Therefore, the reaction in the media itself was a much more important factor,
and this seems to have been decidedly mixed. 150 rather obscure activists soon issued a
contrasting statement, which major outlets such as NYT , CNN , and the Los
Angeles Times seem to have accorded equal or greater weight, hardly suggesting that the
ideological tide has started to turn.
Back a couple of years ago, there was a popular joke going around Chinese social media in
which Chairman Mao came back to life with all sorts of questions about the modern world. Among
other things, he was informed his disastrous Cultural Revolution had shifted to America, a
prescient observation given the events of the last few weeks:
The controversial May 25th death of a black man named George Floyd in Minneapolis police
custody soon set off the greatest nationwide wave of protests, riots, and looting in at least
two generations, and the once-placid hometown of the Mary Tyler Moore Show alone suffered some
five hundred million dollars of damage. Some of the main political reactions have been
especially surprising, as the newly elevated activists of the Black Lives Matter movement have
received massive media support for their demands that local urban police departments be
"defunded," a proposal so bizarre that it had previously been almost unknown.
Statues, monuments, and other symbolic representations of traditional American history
quickly became a leading target. Hubert Humphrey's Minneapolis has long been an extremely
liberal bastion of the heavily Scandinavian Upper Midwest, having no ties to the South or
slavery, but Floyd's death soon launched an unprecedented national effort to eradicate all
remaining Confederate memorials and other Southern cultural traces throughout our society.
Popular country music groups such as the Dixie Chicks
and Lady
Antebellum had freely recorded their songs for decades, but they were now suddenly forced
to change their names in frantic haste.
And although this revolutionary purge began with Confederacy, it soon extended to include
much of our entire national history, with illustrious former occupants of the White House being
the most prominent targets. Woodrow Wilson ranked as Princeton University's most famous alumnus
and its former president, but his name
was quickly scraped off the renowned public policy school , while the Natural History
Museum of New York is similarly
removing a statue of Theodore Roosevelt .
Abraham Lincoln and
Ulysses S. Grant had together won the Civil War and abolished black slavery, but their
statues around the country were vandalized or ordered removed. The same fate befell
Andrew Jackson along with the author of the Star Spangled Banner, our national anthem.
The leading heroes of the American Republic from its birth in 1776 face "cancellation" and
this sudden tidal wave of attacks has clearly gained considerable elite backing. The New
York Times carries enormous weight in such circles, and last Tuesday their lead opinion
piece called for the
Jefferson Memorial to be replaced by a towering statue of a black woman, while one of their
regular columnists has repeatedly demanded that all
monuments honoring George Washington suffer a similar fate . Stacy Abrams, often mentioned
as one of Joe Biden's leading Vice Presidential choices, had previously made
the destruction of Georgia's historic Stone Mountain Memorial part of her campaign
platform, so we now seem only a step or two away from credible political demands that Mount
Rushmore be dynamited Taliban-style.
The original roots of our country were Anglo-Saxon and this heritage remained dominant
during its first century or more, but other strands in our national tapestry are suffering
similar vilification. Christopher Columbus discovered the New World for Spain, but he has
became a hated
and despised figure across our country , so perhaps in the near future his only surviving
North American monument will be the huge statue honoring him in the
heart of Mexico City . Father Junipero Serra founded Hispanic California and a few years
ago was canonized as the first and only Latin American saint, but his
statues have been toppled and his name already removed from Stanford University buildings.
At the time we acquired the sparsely-populated American Southwest, the bulk of our new Hispanic
population was concentrated in New Mexico, but the founding father of that region has now had
his monument attacked and vandalized . Cervantes, author of Don Quixote , is
considered the greatest writer in the Spanish language, and his statue was also
vandalized .
Perhaps these trends will abate and the onrushing tide of cultural destruction may begin to
recede. But at present there seems a serious possibility that the overwhelming majority of
America's leading historical figures prior to the political revolution of the 1930s may be
destined for the scrap heap. A decade ago, President Obama and most prominent Democrats opposed
Gay Marriage, but just a few years later, the CEO of Mozilla
was forced to resign when his past political contribution to a California initiative taking
that same position came to light, and today private individuals might easily lose their jobs at
many corporations for expressing such views. Thus, one might easily imagine that within five or
ten years, any public expressions of admiration for Washington or Jefferson might be considered
by many as bordering on "hate speech," and carry severe social and employment consequences. Our
nation seems to be suffering the sort of fate normally inflicted upon a conquered people, whose
new masters seek to break their spirit and stamp out any notions of future resistance.
A good example of this growing climate of fear came a couple of weeks ago when a longtime
blogger going under the name "Scott Alexander"
deleted his entire website and its millions of words of accumulated archives because the
New York Times was about to run an article revealing his true identity. I had only been
slightly aware of the SlateStarCodex
blogsite and the "rationalist" community it had gradually accumulated, but the development
was apparently significant enough to provoke
a long article in the New Yorker .
The target of the alleged witch-hunt was hardly any sort of right-winger. He was reportedly
a liberal Jewish psychiatrist living in Berkeley, whose most notable piece of writing had been
a massive 30,000 word refutation of neo-reactionary thought. But because he was willing to
entertain ideas and contributors outside the tight envelope of the politically-correct canon,
he believed that his life would be destroyed if his name became known.
Conservative commenter Tucker Carlson has recently attracted the highest ratings in cable
history for populist positions, some of which have influenced President Trump. But just a
couple of days ago, his top writer, a certain Blake Neff, was
forced to resign after CNN revealed his years of pseudonymous remarks on a rightwing
forum, even though the most egregious of these seemed no worse than somewhat crude
racially-charged humor.
Our own website attracts thousands of commenters, many of whom have left remarks vastly more
controversial than anything written by Neff let alone Alexander, and these two incidents
naturally
inspired several posts by blogger Steve Sailer , which attracted many hundreds of worried
comments in the resulting threads. Although I could entirely understood that many members of
our community were fearful of being "doxxed" by the media, I explained why I thought the
possibility quite unlikely.
Although it's been a few years since my name last appeared on the front page of the New
York Times , I am still at least a bit of a public figure, and I would say that many of the
articles I have published under my own name have been at least 100 times as "controversial" as
anything written by the unfortunate "Scott Alexander." The regular monthly traffic to our
website is six or seven times as great as that which flowed to SlateStarCodex prior to its
sudden disappearance, and I suspect that our influence has also been far greater. Any serious
journalist who wanted to get in touch with me could certainly do so, and I have been freely
given many interviews in the past, while hundreds of reasonably prominent writers, academics,
and other intellectuals have spent years on my regular distribution list.
Tracking down the identity of an anonymous commenter who once or twice made doubtful remarks
is extremely hard work, and at the end of the process you will have probably netted yourself a
pretty small fish. Surely any eager scalp-hunter in the media would prefer to casually mine the
hundreds of thousands of words in my articles, which would provide a veritable cornucopia of
exceptionally explosive material, all fully searchable and conveniently organized by particular
taboos. Yet for years the entire journalistic community has scrupulously averted their eyes
from such mammoth potential scandal. And the likely explanation may provide some important
insights into the dynamics of ideological conflict in the media.
Activist organizations often take the lead in locating controversial statements, which they
then pass along to their media allies for ritual denunciation, and much of my own material
would seem especially provocative to the fearsome ADL. Yet oddly enough, that organization
seemed quite reluctant to engage with me, and only after my repeated baiting did
they finally issue a rather short and perfunctory critique in 2018, which lacked any named
author. But even that lackluster effort afforded me an opening to respond with my own
7,300 word essay highlighting the very unsavory origins and activities of that
controversial organization. After that exchange, they went back into hiding and have remained
there ever since.
In my lengthy analysis
of the true history of World War II, I described what I called "the Lord Voldemort Effect,"
explaining why so much of our mainstream source material should be treated with great care:
In the popular Harry Potter series, Lord Voldemort, the great nemesis of the young
magicians, is often identified as "He Who Must Not Be Named," since the mere vocalization of
those few particular syllables might bring doom upon the speaker. Jews have long enjoyed
enormous power and influence over the media and political life, while fanatic Jewish
activists demonstrate hair-trigger eagerness to denounce and vilify all those suspected of
being insufficiently friendly towards their ethnic group. The combination of these two
factors has therefore induced such a "Lord Voldemort Effect" regarding Jewish activities in
most writers and public figures. Once we recognize this reality, we should become very
cautious in analyzing controversial historical issues that might possibly contain a Jewish
dimension, and also be particularly wary of arguments from silence.
However, even dread Lord Voldemorts may shrink from a terrifying Lord Voldemort of their
own, and I think that this website falls into that category. The ADL and various other powerful
organizations may have quietly issued an edict that absolutely forbids the media outlets they
influence from mentioning our existence. I believe there is strong evidence in favor of this
remarkable hypothesis.
Among Trump's surviving advisors, Stephen Miller provokes some of the most intense
hostility, and last November the SPLC and its media allies made a concerted attempt to force
his resignation based upon some of his private emails, which had promoted several controversial
posts by Steve Sailer. The resulting firestorm was discussed on this website, and
I analyzed some of the strange anomalies:
Just as might be expected, the whole SPLC attack is "guilt by association," and Ctrl-F
reveals a full 14 references to VDare, with the website characterized in very harsh terms.
Yet although there are several mentions of Steve and his writings, there is absolutely no
reference to this webzine, despite being Steve's primary venue.
Offhand, this might seem extremely odd. My own guess is that much of the material we
publish is 10x as "controversial" as anything VDare has ever run, and many of my own personal
articles, including those that have spent over a year on the Home page, might be up in the
30x or 40x potency range. Moreover, I think our traffic these days is something like 10x that
of VDare, seemingly making us an extremely juicy target.
Now admittedly, I don't know that Miller fellow, but the horrifying VDare post that Miller
supposedly shared was actually republished by VDare from this website. And that would surely
have made it very, very easy for the SPLC to use the connection as a opening to begin
cataloguing the unspeakingly horrifying list of transgressions we regularly feature, easily
expanding the length of their attack on Miller by adding another 6,000 words. Yet the silence
has been totally deafening. Puzzling
Here's my own hypothesis
As everyone knows, there are certain "powerful groups" in our society that so terrify
members of the media and political worlds that they receive the "Lord Voldemort Treatment,"
with mainstream individuals being terrified that merely speaking the name would result in
destruction. Indeed, the SPLC is one of the primary enforcers of that edict.
However, my theory is that even those dread Lord Voldemorts greatly fear an even more
dreadful Lord Voldemort of their own, namely this webzine. The SPLC writer knew perfectly
well that mere mention of The Unz Review might ensure his destruction. I'd guess that
the ADL/SPLC/AIPAC has made this prohibition absolutely clear to everyone in the
media/political worlds.
Given that Miller's main transgression was his promotion of posts originally published on
this website, the media could have easily associated him with the rest of our material, much of
which was sufficiently explosive to have almost certainly forced his resignation. Yet when the
journalists and activists weighed the likelihood of destroying Trump's most hated advisor
against the danger of mentioning our existence, the latter factor was still judged the
stronger, allowing Miller to survive.
This hypothesis was strongly supported by a second incident later that same month. We had
previously published an article by Prof. Eric Rasmusen of Indiana University, and I read in my
morning Times that he had suddenly
become embroiled in a major Internet controversy , with a chorus of angry critics seeking
to have him removed. According to the article, he had apparently promoted the "vile and stupid"
views of some anti-feminist website in one of his Tweets, which had come to the attention of an
enraged activist. The resulting firestorm of denunciations on Twitter had been viewed 2.5
million times, provoking a major academic controversy in the national media.
Being curious about what had happened, I contacted Rasmusen to see whether he might want to
submit a piece regarding the controversy,
which he did . But to my utter astonishment, I discovered that the website involved had
actually been our own, a fact that I never would never have suspected from the extremely vague
and circuitous discussion provided in the newspaper. Apparently, the old-fashioned
Who-What-Where provisions of the Times style manual had been quietly amended to prohibit
providing any hint of our existence even when we were at the absolute center of one of their
1,000 word news stories.
Highly-controversial ideas backed by strong evidence may prove dangerously contagious, and
the political/media strategy pursued by the ADL, the Times , and numerous other organs
of the elite establishment seems perfectly rational. Since our Bill of Rights still provides
considerable protection for freedom of speech, the next-best alternative is to institute a
strict cordon sanitaire , intended to strictly minimize the number of individuals who
might become infected.
Our webzine and my own articles are hardly the only victims of this sort of strategy -- once
dubbed "the Blackout" by eminent historian Harry Elmer Barnes -- whose other targets often
possess the most respectable of establishmentarian credentials.
Last month marked the 31st anniversary of the notorious 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, and
elite media coverage was especially extensive this year due to our current global confrontation
with China. The New York Times devoted most of two full pages to a photo-laden
recapitulation while the Wall Street Journal gave it front-page treatment, with just
those two publications alone running some six separate articles and columns on those horrifying
events from three decades ago.
Yet back in the 1990s, the former Beijing bureau chief of the Washington Post , who
had personally covered the events, published a long article in the prestigious Columbia
Journalism Review entitled The Myth of Tiananmen
, in which he publicly admitted that the supposed "massacre" was merely a fraudulent concoction
of careless journalists and dishonest propagandists. At least some of our top editors and
journalists must surely be aware of these facts, and feel guilty about promoting a
long-debunked hoax of the late 1980s. But any mention of those widely-known historical facts is
strictly forbidden in the media, lest American readers become confused and begin to consider an
alternative narrative.
Russia possesses a nuclear arsenal at least as powerful as our own, and the total break in
our relations began when Congress passed the Magnitsky Act in 2012, targeting important Russian
leaders. Yet none of our media outlets have ever been willing to admit that the facts used to
justify that very dangerous decision seem to have been entirely fraudulent, as recounted
in
the article we recently published by Prof. John Ryan.
Similarly, our sudden purge from both Google and Facebook came just days after my own
long article presenting the strong evidence that America's ongoing Covid-19 disaster was
the unintentional blowback from our own extremely reckless biowarfare attack against China (and
Iran). Over 130,000 of our citizens have already died and our daily life has been wrecked, so
the American people might grow outraged if they began to suspect that this huge national
disaster was entirely self-inflicted.
And the incident that sparked our current national upheaval includes certain elements that
our media has scrupulously avoided mentioning. The knee-neck hold used against George Floyd was
standard police procedure in Minneapolis and many other cities, and had apparently been
employed thousands of times across our country in recent years with virtually no fatalities.
Meanwhile, Floyd's official autopsy indicated that he had lethal levels
of Fentanyl and other illegal drugs in his system at the time of his demise. Perhaps the
connection between these two facts is more than purely coincidental, and if they became widely
known, popular sentiments might shift.
Finally, our alternative media webzine is pleased to have recently added two additional
columnists together with major portions of their archives, which will help to further broaden
our perspective.
Larry Romanoff has been a regular contributor to the Global Research website, most recently
focusing on the Coronavirus outbreak in China, and earlier this year he published an
article pointed to the considerable evidence that the virus had originated in the U.S.,
which was cited by Chinese officials and
soon became a flashpoint in American-Chinese relations . After having been viewed millions
of times, that piece and several others seem to have disappeared from their original venue, but
along with the rest of his writings, they are now conveniently available on our own
website .
For the last quarter-century, Jared Taylor has probably been America's most prominent White
Nationalist writer. Although Black Nationalists such as Al Sharpton have cable television shows
and boast of many dozens of visits to the White House, the growing climate of ideological
repression has caused Taylor and his American Renaissance organization to be
deplatformed from YouTube, Twitter, and numerous other Internet services. One of his main
writers is Gregory Hood, whom we have now added as a regular columnist , together with dozens of
his pieces over the last few years.
Claiming 'Unique Opportunity to Lead the Nation,' Parents Ask High School to Adopt 'Freedom
of Expression Resolution'
Has the cancel culture infected your kids' school? A parent group may have a partial remedy.
A
resolution submitted to the New Trier High School board in north suburban Chicago would, if
adopted, assure:
New Trier High School's fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or
deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by
most members of the New Trier High School community to be offensive, unwise.
It would guaranty all members of the school community "the broadest possible latitude to
speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn."
The resolution apparently would be the first of its kind in the nation at the high school
level. It is modeled on
The Chicago Statement , which was adopted by the University of Chicago in 2015 in response
to the illiberal trend of free speech intolerance on college campuses . The full resolution
appears below.
It was drafted by New Trier
Neighbors , a parent group that grew out of opposition to what was criticized as one-sided
content in the school's "Seminar Day" in 2017, which a
Wall Street Journal article called "Racial Indoctrination Day."
The seminar received extensive, national media attention because of its exclusive focus on
topics like systemic racism, implicit bias and, as the Journal put it, the "divisive view of
race as a primordial fact, the essence of identity, a bright line between oppressed and
oppressor."
We
wrote about it here at the time. My son attended the school then. I was among the critics
who asked for a broader range of viewpoints like those of Robert Woodson, Shelby Steele, Thomas
Sowell, John McWhorter and Corey Brooks. The school rejected our requests.
Since then, the school has only broadened what it describes as its "equity initiative,"
expanding what dissenting parents regard as authoritarian imposition of the far left's
single-minded views on race – as well as other topics. Last year, the school moved to
infuse its administration's views on "equity" into virtually all subject areas including math,
science, sports, language and more, which you can see in the
memo linked here .
Some right-of-center students have
spoken up about having their viewpoints squelched, and even being penalized on grading for
their views. My kids reported the same things when there.
New Trier is hardly alone. Similar stories from high schools and even grade schools around
the country are now common.
The resolution presents the school with an opportunity to move in a more balanced direction
that respects diversity of opinion and returns the school to a focus on critical thinking
skills. New Trier Neighbors drafted the resolution in consultation with the K-12 policy experts
at the Foundation for Individual Rights in
Education.
No word yet on how or when the school board will act on it.
We often receive emails at Wirepoints from ordinary citizens asking "What can I do? How can
I get involved to stop what's happening?"
This resolution is one answer. Push for a similar one in your school districts.
The cancel culture that now plagues the nation has its roots where it should have no place
whatsoever – schools. That's especially true about the disastrously counterproductive
orthodoxy on systemic racism, implicit bias and the like. Its easily predictable consequences
are now apparent across the nation – more racism and division. Race relations have been
set back by fifty years.
For those reasons, what New Trier itself does with the resolution is actually secondary.
While we hope it will adopt the resolution, it's far more important that its introduction set a
trend for districts around the nation.
Indoctrination long ago replaced education on most college campuses. Freedom of expression
resolutions might help save high schools from the same fate.
Parents, it's in your hands.
The New Trier High School Freedom of Expression Resolution, presented to the Board for
adoption in its entirety, and based on The Chicago Statement:
Because New Trier High School is committed to free and open inquiry in all matters, it
guarantees all members of the New Trier High School community the broadest possible latitude to
speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn. Except insofar as limitations on that freedom are
necessary to the functioning of New Trier High School, New Trier High School fully respects and
supports the freedom of all members of the New Trier High School community "to discuss any
problem that presents itself."
Of course, the ideas of different members of the New Trier High School community will often
and quite naturally conflict. But it is not the proper role of New Trier High School to attempt
to shield individuals from ideas and opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even
offensive. Although New Trier High School greatly values civility, and although all members of
the New Trier High School community share in the responsibility for maintaining a climate of
mutual respect, concerns about civility and mutual respect can never be used as a justification
for closing off discussion of ideas, however offensive or disagreeable those ideas may be to
some members of our community.
The freedom to debate and discuss the merits of competing ideas does not, of course, mean
that individuals may say whatever they wish, wherever they wish. New Trier High School may
restrict expression that violates the law, that falsely defames a specific individual, that
constitutes a genuine threat or harassment, that unjustifiably invades substantial privacy or
confidentiality interests, or that is otherwise directly incompatible with the functioning of
New Trier High School.In addition, New Trier High School may reasonably regulate the time,
place, and manner of expression to ensure that it does not disrupt the ordinary activities of
New Trier High School. But these are narrow exceptions to the general principle of freedom of
expression, and it is vitally important that these exceptions never be used in a manner that is
inconsistent with New Trier High School's commitment to a completely free and open discussion
of ideas.
In a word, New Trier High School's fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or
deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by
most members of the New Trier High School community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or
wrong-headed. It is for the individual members of the New Trier High School community, not for
New Trier High School as an institution, to make those judgments for themselves, and to act on
those judgments not by seeking to suppress speech, but by openly and vigorously contesting the
ideas that they oppose. Indeed, fostering the ability of members of the New Trier High School
community to engage in such debate and deliberation in an effective and responsible manner is
an essential part of New Trier High School's educational mission.
As a corollary to New Trier High School's commitment to protect and promote free expression,
members of the New Trier High School community must also act in conformity with the principle
of free expression. Although members of the New Trier High School community are free to
criticize and contest the views expressed on campus, and to criticize and contest speakers who
are invited to express their views on campus, they may not obstruct or otherwise interfere with
the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loathe. To this end, New Trier High
School has a solemn responsibility not only to promote a lively and fearless freedom of debate
and deliberation, but also to protect that freedom when others attempt to restrict it."
Criticisms of "cancel culture" often is hypocrtical, as was the case with Weiss, and are connected with prioritizing speech that
shores up the status quo -- necon dominance in the US MSM.
An open letter published by Harper's magazine,
and signed by 150 prominent writers and public figures, has focused attention on the apparent dangers of what has been termed a new
"cancel culture".
The letter brings together an unlikely alliance of genuine leftists, such as Noam Chomsky and Matt Karp, centrists such as J K
Rowling and Ian Buruma, and neoconservatives such as David Frum and Bari Weiss, all speaking out in defence of free speech.
Although the letter doesn't explicitly use the term "cancel culture", it is clearly what is meant in the complaint about a "stifling"
cultural climate that is imposing "ideological conformity" and weakening "norms of open debate and toleration of differences".
It is easy to agree with the letter's generalized argument for tolerance and free and fair debate. But the reality is that many
of those who signed are utter hypocrites, who have shown precisely zero commitment to free speech, either in their words or in their
deeds.
Further, the intent of many them in signing the letter is the very reverse of their professed goal: they want to stifle free speech,
not protect it.
To understand what is really going on with this letter, we first need to scrutinize the motives , rather than the substance,
of the letter.
A new 'illiberalism'
"Cancel culture" started as the shaming, often on social media, of people who were seen to have said offensive things. But of
late, cancel culture has on occasion become more tangible, as the letter notes, with individuals fired or denied the chance to speak
at a public venue or to publish their work.
The letter denounces this supposedly new type of "illiberalism":
"We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls
for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought.
"Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred
from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; The result has been to steadily
narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion
among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient
zeal in agreement."
Tricky identity politics
The array of signatories is actually more troubling than reassuring. If we lived in a more just world, some of those signing –
like Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W Bush, and Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former US State Department official – would
be facing a reckoning before a Hague war crimes tribunal for their roles in promoting "interventions" in Iraq and Libya respectively,
not being held up as champions of free speech.
That is one clue that these various individuals have signed the letter for very different reasons.
Chomsky signed because he has been a lifelong and consistent defender of the right to free speech, even for those with appalling
opinions such as Holocaust denial.
Frum, who coined the term "axis of evil" that rationalised the invasion of Iraq, and Weiss, a New York Times columnist, signed
because they have found their lives getting tougher. True, it is easy for them to dominate platforms in the corporate media while
advocating for criminal wars abroad, and they have paid no career price when their analyses and predictions have turned out to be
so much dangerous hokum. But they are now feeling the backlash on university campuses and social media.
Meanwhile, centrists like Buruma and Rowling have discovered that it is getting ever harder to navigate the tricky terrain of
identity politics without tripping up. The reputational damage can have serious consequences.
Buruma famously lost his job as editor of the New York Review of Books two years ago after after he published and defended an
article that
violated
the new spirit of the #MeToo movement. And Rowling made the
mistake of thinking her followers would be as
fascinated by her traditional views on transgender issues as they are by her Harry Potter books.
'Fake news, Russian trolls'
But the fact that all of these writers and intellectuals agree that there is a price to be paid in the new, more culturally sensitive
climate does not mean that they are all equally interested in protecting the right to be controversial or outspoken.
Chomsky, importantly, is defending free speech for all , because he correctly understands that the powerful are only too
keen to find justifications to silence those who challenge their power. Elites protect free speech only in so far as it serves their
interests in dominating the public space.
If those on the progressive left do not defend the speech rights of everyone, even their political opponents, then any restrictions
will soon be turned against them. The establishment will always tolerate the hate speech of a Trump or a Bolsonaro over the justice
speech of a Sanders or a Corbyn.
By contrast, most of the rest of those who signed – the rightwingers and the centrists – are interested in free speech for
themselves and those like them . They care about protecting free speech only in so far as it allows them to continue dominating
the public space with their views – something they were only too used to until a few years ago, before social media started to level
the playing field a little.
The center and the right have been fighting back ever since with claims that anyone who seriously challenges the neoliberal status
quo at home and the neoconservative one abroad is promoting "fake news" or is a "Russian troll". This updating of the charge of being
"un-American" embodies cancel culture at its very worst.
Social media accountability
In other words, apart from in the case of a few progressives, the letter is simply special pleading – for a return to the status
quo. And for that reason, as we shall see, Chomsky might have been better advised not to have added his name, however much he agrees
with the letter's vague, ostensibly pro-free speech sentiments.
What is striking about a significant proportion of those who signed is their self-identification as ardent supporters of Israel.
And as Israel's critics know only too well, advocates for Israel have been at the forefront of the cancel culture – from long before
the term was even coined.
For decades, pro-Israel activists have sought to silence anyone seen to be seriously critiquing this small, highly militarized
state, sponsored by the colonial powers, that was implanted in a region rich with a natural resource, oil, needed to lubricate the
global economy, and at a terrible cost to its native, Palestinian population.
Nothing should encourage us to believe that zealous defenders of Israel among those signing the letter have now seen the error
of their ways. Their newfound concern for free speech is simply evidence that they have begun to suffer from the very same cancel
culture they have always promoted in relation to Israel.
They have lost control of the "cancel culture" because of two recent developments: a rapid growth in identity politics among liberals
and leftists, and a new popular demand for "accountability" spawned by the rise of social media.
Cancelling Israel's critics
In fact, despite their professions of concern, the evidence suggests that some of those signing the letter have been intensifying
their own contribution to cancel culture in relation to Israel, rather than contesting it.
That is hardly surprising. The need to counter criticism of Israel has grown more pressing as Israel has more obviously become
a pariah state. Israel has refused to countenance peace talks with the Palestinians and it has intensified its efforts to realize
long-harbored plans to annex swaths of the West Bank in violation of international law.
Rather than allow "robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters" on Israel, Israel's supporters have preferred the
tactics of those identified in the letter as enemies of free speech: "swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions
of speech and thought".
Just ask Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the Labour party who was reviled, along with his supporters, as an antisemite – one
of the worst smears imaginable – by several people on the Harper's list, including
Rowling and
Weiss . Such claims
were promoted even though his critics could produce no actual evidence of an antisemitism problem in the Labour party.
Similarly, think of the treatment of Palestinian solidarity activists who support a boycott of Israel (BDS), modeled on the one
that helped push South Africa's leaders into renouncing apartheid. BDS activists too have been smeared as antisemites – and Weiss
again has been a prime
offender .
The incidents highlighted in the Harper's letter in which individuals have supposedly been cancelled is trivial compared to the
cancelling of a major political party and of a movement that stands in solidarity with a people who have been oppressed for decades.
And yet how many of these free speech warriors have come forward to denounce the fact that leftists – including many Jewish anti-Zionists
– have been pilloried as antisemites to prevent them from engaging in debates about Israel's behavior and its abuses of Palestinian
rights?
How many of them have decried the imposition of a new definition of antisemitism, by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance,
that has been rapidly gaining ground in western countries?
That definition is designed to silence a large section of the left by prioritizing the safety of Israel from being criticized
before the safety of Jews from being vilified and attacked – something that even the lawyer who authored the definition has come
to
regret .
Why has none of this "cancel culture" provoked an open letter to Harper's from these champions of free speech?
Double-edge sword
The truth is that many of those who signed the letter are defending not free speech but their right to continue dominating the
public square – and their right to do so without being held accountable.
Bari Weiss, before she landed a job at the Wall Street Journal and then the New York Times, spent her student years trying to
get Muslim professors
fired from her university – cancelling them – because of their criticism of Israel. And she explicitly did so under the banner
of "academic freedom", claiming pro-Israel students felt intimidated in the classroom.
The New York Civil Liberties Union concluded that it was Weiss, not the professors, who was the real threat to academic freedom.
This was not some youthful indiscretion. In a book last year Weiss cited her efforts to rid Columbia university of these professors
as a formative experience on which she still draws.
Weiss and many of the others listed under the letter are angry that the rhetorical tools they used for so long to stifle the free
speech of others have now been turned against them. Those who lived for so long by the sword of identity politics – on Israel, for
example – are worried that their reputations may die by that very same sword – on issues of race, sex and gender.
Narcissistic concern
To understand how the cancel culture is central to the worldview of many of these writers and intellectuals, and how blind they
are to their own complicity in that culture, consider the case of Jonathan Freedland, a columnist with the supposedly liberal-left
British newspaper the Guardian. Although Freedland is not among those signing the letter, he is very much aligned with the centrists
among them and, of course, supported the letter in an article
published in the Guardian.
Freedland, we should note, led the "cancel culture" campaign against the Labour party referenced above. He was one of the key
figures in Britain's Jewish community who breathed life into the
antisemitism smears
against Corbyn and his supporters.
But note the brief clip below. In it, Freedland's voice can be heard cracking as he explains how he has been a victim of the cancel
culture himself: he confesses that he has suffered verbal and emotional abuse at the hands of Israel's most extreme apologists –
those who are even more unapologetically pro-Israel than he is.
He reports that he has been called a "kapo", the term for Jewish collaborators in the Nazi concentration camps, and a "sonderkommando",
the Jews who disposed of the bodies of fellow Jews killed in the gas chambers. He admits such abuse "burrows under your skin" and
"hurts tremendously".
And yet, despite the personal pain he has experienced of being unfairly accused, of being cancelled by a section of his own community,
Freedland has been at the forefront of the campaign to tar critics of Israel, including anti-Zionist Jews, as antisemites on the
flimsiest of evidence.
He is entirely oblivious to the ugly nature of the cancel culture – unless it applies to himself . His concern is purely
narcissistic. And so it is with the majority of those who signed the letter.
Conducting a monologue
The letter's main conceit is the pretence that "illiberalism" is a new phenomenon, that free speech is under threat, and that
the cancel culture only arrived at the moment it was given a name.
That is simply nonsense. Anyone over the age of 35 can easily remember a time when newspapers and websites did not have a talkback
section, when blogs were few in number and rarely read, and when there was no social media on which to challenge or hold to account
"the great and the good".
Writers and columnists like those who signed the letter were then able to conduct a monologue in which they revealed their opinions
to the rest of us as if they were Moses bringing down the tablets from the mountaintop.
In those days, no one noticed the cancel culture – or was allowed to remark on it. And that was because only those who held approved
opinions were ever given a media platform from which to present those opinions.
Before the digital revolution, if you dissented from the narrow consensus imposed by the billionaire owners of the corporate media,
all you could do was print your own primitive newsletter and send it by post to the handful of people who had heard of you.
That was the real cancel culture. And the proof is in the fact that many of those formerly obscure writers quickly found they
could amass tens of thousands of followers – with no help from the traditional corporate media – when they had access to blogs and
social media.
Silencing the left
Which brings us to the most troubling aspect of the open letter in Harper's. Under cover of calls for tolerance, given credibility
by Chomsky's name, a proportion of those signing actually want to restrict the free speech of one section of the population – the
part influenced by Chomsky.
They are not against the big cancel culture from which they have benefited for so long. They are against the small cancel culture
– the new more chaotic, and more democratic, media environment we currently enjoy – in which they are for the first time being held
to account for their views, on a range of issues including Israel.
Just as Weiss tried to get professors fired under the claim of academic freedom, many of these writers and public figures are
using the banner of free speech to discredit speech they don't like, speech that exposes the hollowness of their own positions.
Their criticisms of "cancel culture" are really about prioritizing "responsible" speech, defined as speech shared by centrists
and the right that shores up the status quo. They want a return to a time when the progressive left – those who seek to disrupt a
manufactured consensus, who challenge the presumed verities of neoliberal and neoconservative orthodoxy – had no real voice.
The new attacks on "cancel culture" echo the attacks on Bernie Sanders' supporters, who were framed as "Bernie Bros" – the evidence-free
allegation that he attracted a rabble of aggressive, women-hating men who tried to bully others into silence on social media.
Just as this claim was used to discredit Sanders' policies, so the center and the right now want to discredit the left more generally
by implying that, without curbs, they too will bully everyone else into silence and submission through their "cancel culture".
If this conclusion sounds unconvincing, consider that President Donald Trump could easily have added his name to the letter alongside
Chomsky's. Trump used his recent Independence Day
speech at Mount Rushmore to make similar points to the Harper's letter. He at least was explicit in equating "cancel culture"
with what he called "far-left fascism":
"One of [the left's] political weapons is 'Cancel Culture' – driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding
total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism This attack on our liberty, our magnificent
liberty, must be stopped, and it will be stopped very quickly."
Trump, in all his vulgarity, makes plain what the Harper's letter, in all its cultural finery, obscures. That attacks on the new
"cancel culture" are simply another front – alongside supposed concerns about "fake news" and "Russian trolls" – in the establishment's
efforts to limit speech by the left.
Attention redirected
This is not to deny that there is fake news on social media or that there are trolls, some of them even Russian. Rather, it is
to point out that our attention is being redirected, and our concerns manipulated by a political agenda.
Despite the way it has been presented in the corporate media, fake news on social media has been mostly a problem of the right.
And the worst examples of fake news – and the most influential – are found not on social media at all, but on the front pages of
the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
What genuinely fake news on Facebook has ever rivaled the lies justifying the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that were knowingly peddled
by a political elite and their stenographers in the corporate media. Those lies led directly to more than a million Iraqi deaths,
turned millions more into refugees, destroyed an entire country, and fuelled a new type of nihilistic Islamic extremism whose effects
we are still feeling.
Most of the worst lies from the current period – those that have obscured or justified US interference in Syria and Venezuela,
or rationalized war crimes against Iran, or approved the continuing imprisonment of Julian Assange for exposing war crimes – can
only be understood by turning our backs on the corporate media and looking to experts who can rarely find a platform outside of social
media.
I say this as someone who has concerns about the fashionable focus on identity politics rather than class politics. I say it also
as someone who rejects all forms of cancel culture – whether it is the old-style, "liberal" cancel culture that imposes on us a narrow
"consensus" politics (the Overton window), or the new "leftwing" cancel culture that too often prefers to focus on easy cultural
targets like Rowling than the structural corruption of western political systems.
But those who are impressed by the letter simply because Chomsky's name is attached should beware. Just as "fake news" has provided
the pretext for Google and social media platforms to change their algorithms to vanish left-wingers from searches and threads, just
as "antisemitism" has been redefined to demonize the left, so too the supposed threat of "cancel culture" will be exploited to silence
the left.
Protecting Bari Weiss and J K Rowling from a baying left-wing "mob" – a mob that that claims a right to challenge their views
on Israel or trans issues – will become the new rallying cry from the establishment for action against "irresponsible" or
"intimidating" speech.
Progressive leftists who join these calls out of irritation with the current focus on identity politics, or because they fear
being labelled an antisemite, or because they mistakenly assume that the issue really is about free speech, will quickly find that
they are the main targets.
In defending free speech, they will end up being the very ones who are silenced.
UPDATE:
You don't criticise Chomsky however tangentially and respectfully – at least not from a left perspective – without expecting a
whirlwind of opposition. But one issue that keeps being raised on my social media feeds in his defence is just plain wrong-headed,
so I want to quickly address it. Here's one my followers expressing the point succinctly:
"The sentiments in the letter stand or fall on their own merits, not on the characters or histories of some of the signatories,
nor their future plans."
The problem, as I'm sure Chomsky would explain in any other context, is that this letter fails not just because of the other people
who signed it but on its merit too . And that's because, as I explain above, it ignores the most oppressive and most established
forms of cancel culture, as Chomsky should have been the first to notice.
Highlighting the small cancel culture, while ignoring the much larger, establishment-backed cancel culture, distorts our understanding
of what is at stake and who wields power.
Chomsky unwittingly just helped a group of mostly establishment stooges skew our perceptions of free speech problems so that we
side with them against ourselves. There is no way that can be a good thing.
UPDATE 2:
There are still people holding out against the idea that it harmed the left to have Chomsky sign this letter. And rather than
address their points individually, let me try another way of explaining my argument:
Why has Chomsky not signed a letter backing the furore over "fake news", even though there is some fake news on social media?
Why has he not endorsed the "Bernie Bros" narrative, even though doubtless there are some bullying Sanders supporters on social media?
Why has he not supported the campaign claiming the Labour party has an antisemitism problem, even though there are some antisemites
in the Labour party (as there are everywhere)?
He hasn't joined any of those campaigns for a very obvious reason – because he understands how power works, and that on the left
you hit up, not down. You certainly don't cheerlead those who are up as they hit down.
Chomsky understands this principle only too well because here he is
setting it out in relation to Iran:
"Suppose I criticise Iran. What impact does that have? The only impact it has is in fortifying those who want to carry out policies
I don't agree with, like bombing."
For exactly the same reason he has not joined those pillorying Iran – because his support would be used for nefarious ends – he
shouldn't have joined this campaign. He made a mistake. He's fallible.
Also, this isn't about the left eating itself. Really, Chomsky shouldn't be the issue. The issue should be that a bunch
of centrists and right-wingers used this letter to try to reinforce a narrative designed to harm the left, and lay the groundwork
for further curbs on its access to social media. But because Chomsky signed the letter, many more leftists are now buying into that
narrative – a narrative intended to harm them. That's why Chomsky's role cannot be ignored, nor his mistake glossed over.
UPDATE 3:
I had not anticipated how many ways people on the left might find to justify this letter.
Here's the latest reasoning. Apparently, the letter sets an important benchmark that can in future be used to protect free speech
by the left when we are threatened with being "cancelled" – as, for example, with the antisemitism smears that were used against
anti-Zionist Jews and other critics of Israel in the British Labour party.
I should hardly need to point out how naive this argument is. It completely ignores how power works in our societies: who gets
to decide what words mean and how principles are applied. This letter won't help the left because "cancel culture" is being framed
– by this letter, by Trump, by the media – as a "loony left" problem. It is a new iteration of the "politically correct gone mad"
discourse, and it will be used in exactly the same way.
It won't help Steven Salaita, sacked from a university job because he criticised Israel's killing of civilians in Gaza, or Chris
Williamson, the Labour MP expelled because he defended the party's record on being anti-racist.
The "cancel culture" furore isn't interested in the fact that they were "cancelled". Worse still, this moral panic turns the whole
idea of cancelling on its head: it is Salaita and Williamson who are accused – and found guilty – of doing the cancelling, of cancelling
Israel and Jews.
Israel's supporters will continue to win this battle by claiming that criticism of Israel "cancels" that country ("wipes it off
the map"), "cancels" Israel's Jewish population ("drives them into the sea"), and "cancels" Jews more generally ("denies a central
component of modern Jewish identity").
Greater awareness of "cancel culture" would not have saved Corbyn from the antisemitism smears because the kind of cancel culture
that smeared Corbyn is never going to be defined as "cancelling".
For anyone who wishes to see how this works in practice, watch Guardian columnist Owen Jones cave in – as he has done so often
– to the power dynamics of the "cancel culture" discourse in this interview with Sky News. I actually agree with almost everything
Jones says in this clip, apart from his joining yet again in the witch-hunt against Labour's anti-Zionists. He doesn't see that witch-hunt
as "cancel culture", and neither will anyone else with a large platform like his to protect:
There is no issue in American life about which the mainstream media ignores or distorts
the truth more than Israel/Palestine, and censors or "cancels" the people who could tell
it.
So far, the growing debate over "cancel culture" has understandably focused on individual
cases. Certainly, Israel/Palestine has many examples of courageous thinkers who have suffered
for their views: Steven Salaita and Norman Finkelstein come immediately to mind. But the
blackout has been so far-reaching for so long that we can say that an entire subject has been
ignored or distorted in the mainstream almost beyond recognition.
Right now, Israel is conducting a violent sabotage campaign against Iran, in an effort to
provoke America into war -- and there is a nearly complete news blackout in the United
States.
Maybe the 153 celebrated signatories to that now famous letter to
Harper's magazine that warned about "cancel culture" could draft another epistle,
one that appeals for an end to suppressing free discussion about Israel and
Palestine.
On July 10, another explosion hit near near Tehran, the latest in a string that have
struck at, among other targets, Iran's nuclear energy program at Natanz. The New York
Times , to its credit, is
reporting on the sabotage campaign, and the paper even said that one of the attacks was
"apparently engineered by Israel." But beyond the basic facts, nothing: no editorials, no
opinion pieces warning about the risk of war, no reminder that Benjamin Netanyahu has been
trying to instigate the U.S. against Iran for at least a decade. There was no effort to
explain that Israel's attacks are meant to goad Iran into retaliating, which will draw in the
U.S., and possibly help Donald Trump's sinking reelection campaign.
At least the Times is doing the bare minimum. So far in the Washington
Post, not a word from its own reporters or commenters; you would think that the paper
could find sources in the D.C. intelligence community to explain the danger of war. On
National Public Radio, one short,
confused report that provided no context at all. Foreign coverage on the U.S. cable
networks continues to be an insignificant joke.
U.S. soldiers, sailors and pilots could soon find themselves in a shooting war that would
stun our citizens with its suddenness.
The mainstream U.S. media's failure to report Israel's effort to provoke fighting with
Iran is happening at the same time as American journalistic malpractice continues over
Netanyahu's plan to illegally annex up to 30 percent of occupied West Bank Palestine. There
has been
very little news coverage of annexation, and Palestinian voices continue to be ignored.
Three members of the New York Times editorial board have extensive experience with
Israel/Palestine: Thomas Friedman, Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss. None of them has yet written
a single word about annexation.
Here is a final paradox. "Cancel culture" means that the New York Times and the
rest of the mainstream are nearly closed to the truth about both Israel's instigation over
Iran, and its probable illegal annexation in the West Bank. But Friedman, the most
influential foreign affairs columnist in America, has to, along with his editorial page
colleagues, self cancel -- because he, like them, can't write anything without
sharply criticizing Israel.
When Sportsnet
fired Canadian hockey and media personality Don Cherry in November 2019 for his bigoted remarks on Coach's Corner , we
heard the usual right-wing complaint chorus about the suppression of free speech by the liberal left.
A favored method of censorship nowadays is said to be "de-platforming," or denying those you disagree with a platform to speak.
This is also called "cancel culture." Most recently, a group of around 150 prominent intellectuals signed a "
Letter on Justice and Open Debate " in
Harper 's magazine, setting off a firestorm of debate about the limits of free speech on the left.
In reality, though, cancel culture is (at best) a marginal activity on the left. By and large, progressives still believe in reasoned
debate.
This article refers to experience in Canada, but it has its counterpart in many other countries as well.
If we want to identify the real masters of cancel culture, however, we need to follow the modus operandi of the institutional
pro-Israel lobby and its adherents, like the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), B'nai Brith Canada (BBC), the Simon Wiesenthal
Center (SWC) and other organizations on the Jewish right. They can teach us a thing or two about how to kill free speech, and how
cancel culture works to stop an utterance before it is even spoken.
Presumably, the reason to nip an Israel-critical event in the bud is that if it goes forward, people might attend and learn something,
especially from a rigorous debate. Even a picket-line outside an event or a disruption during one might draw attention to what is
being said. For the avid intellectual protectors of Israel, that must be stopped at all costs.
The Pro-Israel Cancel Culture Playbook
A spate of examples will follow, but first, to summarize, here are what might be called the "rules of engagement" for the pro-Israel
de-platformers.
The minute you hear about an event featuring a critique of Israel, employ the following formula:
Have a number of organizations at work. If the CIJA is squeamish, then get B'nai Brith Canada to do it. If they or the Simon Wiesenthal
Center have qualms, then the imprudent and belligerent Jewish Defense League or Herut Canada can rush in. No matter how distinguished
and credible the speaker, try guilt-by-association, however tenuous. Did their uncle belong to a questionable organization? Did their
cousin write something critical of Israel? Do they pay dues to a student union that supports Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)?
Shut them down! If the speakers are academics, go after their publications or insist their tenure be denied. If they are students,
demand that their degrees be withheld. The Canadian Jewish News recently reported
: "Rather than debating them about Israel, Manfred Gerstenfeld, the former chair of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs (JCPA),
makes the case for professionally discrediting the enemies [sic] of Israel. 'Find plagiarism or a wrong footnote and make it public,'
he said at a fundraising event for the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, in Montreal on Dec. 1 [2019]. 'Only about 10 per cent
of academics are hard-core anti-Israel and the rest are not going to risk their careers. Academics are cowards.'" Absent real evidence
of antisemitism, a mere accusation will suffice. Find out where the event is being held and who are the sponsors. Contact both the
venue and the sponsors and tell them that the speaker or the event is antisemitic. If you don't want to threaten violence yourself,
suggest that there might be violence from some unknown quarter if the event proceeds. Tell the host or sponsor that they too will
be considered antisemitic if they continue involvement. If any of the venues or sponsors accede to these demands, publicize it to
shame the non-acceders. If an event you don't like is cancelled or postponed, claim credit. Even if the shut-down attempt is not
completely successful, the cost and effort involved in resisting your attack will frighten the organizers and make others think twice
about doing something similar in the future. What I call the "cringe effect" is particularly useful with the media. When a critic
of Israel appears, initiate an avalanche of disparaging letters, emails, and phone calls. Even if the preponderance of material in
the particular media outlet has been pro-Israel, criticize the "lack of balance." If all else fails, demand "equal time" of equal
prominence for an opposing view. That should scare the media outlet away from the topic. The Playbook in Action
While pro-Israel cancel culture goes back a long way, the following are more than two dozen fairly recent examples of the playbook
in action. They are taken mostly from published reports, but a few are taken from accounts by people who were directly involved.
Vancouver
In 2016, anti-Israeli-occupation activists were slated for a panel at a Simon Fraser University (SFU) conference on genocide.
One presenter would argue that what had been done to the Palestinians constituted genocide. (The Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide definition involves any of the following: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily
or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical
destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and/or forcibly transferring children
of the group to another group.) B'nai Brith
reached out to SFU to have the panel cancelled. Organizers pushed back, reaching out to a range of supporters at SFU. The panel
and conference went ahead.
In 2017, the University of British Columbia (UBC) Alma Mater Society (student union) gave notice of a referendum to support the
Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement: "Do you support your student union in boycotting products and divesting from companies
that support Israeli war crimes, illegal occupation and the oppression of Palestinians?" Rather than campaigning to get students
to reject that motion on its merits, Hillel, an organization that purports to represent Jewish university students, filed a court
motion to bar the referendum entirely. That court action
failed .
In 2018, the Canadian Association of Cultural Studies sponsored a conference at SFU entitled "Carceral Culture" including a panel
on Israel/Palestine. Again, B'nai Brith attempted to get it cancelled. Counter-mobilization defeated the B'nai Brith gambit.
Calgary
In 2014, the group Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) prepared a photo exhibit entitled "
Dispossessed, but Defiant: Indigenous Struggles
from around the World " which juxtaposed the Palestinian travails with those of other objects of colonialism, like South African
blacks under apartheid and Canadian indigenous peoples. The exhibition was meant to travel to venues around Canada, but pro-Israel
opponents attempted repeatedly to block those displays. In Calgary, they managed to de-platform the exhibit from a small community
centre. When the hosts finally found a United Church location, opponents inundated the new venue with calls and emails. The show
went ahead but the activists have never been able to rent that church since, validating points 10 and 11 in the playbook, above.
In 2016, local activists booked space at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind for a talk by Haider Abu Ghosh of the Palestinian
Medical Relief Society, about the eradication by the Israelis of three Palestinian villages in 1967. The activists were forced by
complaints to switch the event to the Calgary Public Library. Pro-Israel groups put so much pressure on the library that the hosts
were forced to provide security, at significant cost.
Calgary writer Marcello Di Cintio won the City of Calgary W. O. Mitchell Book Prize in 2012 for "
Walls: Travels Along the Barricades " and, again, in 2018
for " Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in
the Present Tense ." But local pro-Israel organizations opposed his appointment as writer-in-residence at the public library,
insisting, against all evidence, that he was an antisemite.
Winnipeg
In February, 2018, several groups, including Independent Jewish Voices-Winnipeg, the Canadian Arab Association of Manitoba and
the United Jewish Peoples Order-Winnipeg, organized a public meeting at the University of Winnipeg entitled "My Jerusalem" to discuss
the US government's recent decision to move its Israeli embassy to Jerusalem. One of the speakers was Rabbi David Mivasair, a member
of Independent Jewish Voices. Unable to have the meeting cancelled,
B'nai
Brith Canada complained to the university that the speakers were antisemitic and demanded that the university apologize. B'nai
Brith claimed that one of the speakers accused Israel of committing a "genocide" against Palestinians and that another referred to
Israeli Jews as "European settlers." The university's Human Rights and Equity officer investigated the complaint and, claiming to
have consulted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism, allowed the smear to stand, concluding
that the criticism of Israel amounted to antisemitism. When asked by meeting sponsors precisely which statements in the meeting were
antisemitic, the officer declined to answer.
Rabbinical student Lex Rofeberg, an activist with the American Institute for the Next Jewish Future, had been invited as a keynote
speaker to Limmud Winnipeg (an annual Jewish cultural and educational event) in March 2019. Limmud
canceled the invitation when the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg threatened to withdraw its sponsorship, complaining that Rofeberg
was a critic of Israel and a supporter of BDS and the organization
IfNotNow . Neither of Rofeberg's planned presentations (one on digital Judaism, the other on Judaism and sports) had anything
to do with his views on Israel, but he was guilty by association.
In April 2019, the Winnipeg Social Planning Council and the Canadian Muslim Women's Institute invited American-Palestinian activist
and co-founder of the 2017 women's march Linda Sarsour to speak. The Jewish Federation of Winnipeg and B'nai Brith Canada, among
others, lobbied to get the event cancelled and convinced the Winnipeg mayor and the provincial deputy premier to oppose it. The opponents
managed to get Sarsour shut out of the Seven Oaks Performing Arts Centre and the meeting moved to the Ukrainian Labour Temple, where
it
continued .
A MEMBER OF THE JDL DEFACING THE FOODBENDERS STOREFRONT (PHOTO: TWITTER)
Toronto
With Canada's largest Jewish as well as Muslim and Arab populations, Toronto can be a lightning rod for de-platforming outrages.
In 2007, CanStage, a theater company, decided to
cancel
its plans to mount a production of "My Name is Rachel Corrie" (a play taken from the writings of the American activist killed
in Gaza by an Israeli bulldozer while protesting), and two years later Crow's Theatre
presented no more
than a few "staged readings" of "Seven Jewish Children" (by British playwright Caryl Churchill). Both plays were critical of
Israel, and both of these Toronto productions had been subject to negative lobbying by the pro-Israel lobby who labelled them antisemitic.
A more sensational example of cancel culture occurred when, in 2009, scholars at Queen's University and at York University's Osgoode
Hall Law School organized an international conference called "Israel/Palestine: Mapping Models of Statehood and Paths to Peace."
The advisory board of the conference included four Israelis. Yet, pro-Israel organizations including the Jewish Defense League, CIJA,
Hasbara, B'nai Brith, and United Jewish Appeal Federation of Greater Toronto went on the warpath, demanding the conference be cancelled.
York University was warned of boycotts and the cessation of donations and was denounced in full-page newspaper ads. When B'nai Brith
accused one of the speakers of being a Holocaust denier, a threatened lawsuit forced B'nai Brith to apologize on its web page. When
the university refused to cancel the event, the Stephen Harper Conservative federal government ordered the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council to reconsider its funding of the event (which the SSHRC refused). The Canadian Association of University Teachers
(CAUT) set up an independent commission of Inquiry under mathematician Jon Thompson to investigate. The commission and the book that
emerged from it (" No Debate: The Israel Lobby and
Free Speech at Canadian Universities ," Lorimer 2011) concluded that, although the event went ahead, academic freedom had been
grievously damaged.
In 2009, the Koffler Centre for the Arts (associated with Toronto's Jewish community) commissioned an art project from Reena Katz
commemorating the history of Kensington Market. But when its executive director discovered that Katz had called Israel an "apartheid
state", the organization dissociated itself
from the project . As in the Limmud case in Winnipeg, above, and other examples, below, the Kensington exhibit had nothing to
do with Israel. But Katz was guilty by association.
In 2011, a master's thesis critical of Israel by University of Toronto student Ben Peto entitled "The Victimhood of the Powerful:
White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education," was
roundly denounced
by pro-Israel groups , who demanded that the university withdraw their degree. University officials demurred.
For years, pro-Israel organizations have attempted to have the Quds Day march in Toronto entirely shut down. Occurring annually
in June and originally sponsored by the Iranian government, the event has drawn fire from pro-Israel organizations, mostly due to
the strength of its criticism of the Israeli regime. In March 2019, after consultations with legal specialists and other stakeholders,
Toronto city staff reported that shutting down the entire activity was not advisable. After demands to reconsider, staff reported
a month later that the city already had means at its disposal to counter specific acts of alleged hate speech. According to this
second report , moreover, in response to complaints by pro-Israel advocates about the 2018 rally, Toronto police had concluded
"the words spoken during the rally, which were captured and posted to YouTube, did not fit the criteria of a Hate Crime." Undeterred,
opponents initiated other actions to disallow the event. The rally went ahead in June 2019, with 1,000 participants and proceeded
online amid the coronavirus lockdown in 2020.
In summer of 2019, the Palestine Youth Movement was planning an event at Toronto's Trinity St. Paul's United Church to launch
a new scholarship named after Palestinian novelist and nationalist
Ghassan Kanafani . B'nai
Brith Canada appealed to the board of the church to cancel the event, based on its claims that Kanafani was a spokesperson for the
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and was implicated in the 1972 Lod Airport Massacre (he was assassinated soon afterward
by the Israelis). The church board
quickly capitulated . Kanafani has a martyr's cachet among Palestinians similar to that of
Josef Trumpeldor for Israeli Jews.
Sometimes the pro-Israel cancel culture crowd targets moderate pro-Israel Jews, too, reminiscent of the toxic internal feuds that
tear family businesses apart. In January 2020, York University's Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies
canceled
a panel discussion about the climate for Jewish students on campuses. The Jewish Defense League boasted online that it was responsible,
explaining that it opposed the appearance of moderate Mira Sucharov (which the JDL labelled, incorrectly, a "BDS enabler"). To make
the intervention truly bizarre, the JDL also opposed the presence of Alexandre Joffe, who is the editor and BDS monitor for the group
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, which is anti-BDS.
In July 2020, an individual with the Jewish Defense League (JDL) was filmed defacing the storefront of the Foodbenders sandwich
shop in Toronto in broad daylight. According to Yves Engler, writing at Mondoweiss
:
"JDL thugs held a rally in front of Foodbenders, which has 'I Love Gaza' painted on its window. During their hate fest they
scrubbed a Palestinian Lives Matter marking from the sidewalk and, similar to what Jewish supremacist settlers do to Palestinian
homes in the occupied West Bank, someone painted the symbol on the Israeli flag onto the restaurant window. Alongside painting
Stars of David on her storefront, Foodbenders' owner Kimberly Hawkins has faced a bevy of online abuse. Hawkins has been called
a 'dirty Palestinian whore' and told 'Palestine sucks I will burn your business down' and 'I hope your family gets trapped inside
the restaurant when it burns.'"
For over 25 years, Hamilton has hosted the Gandhi Peace Festival. In 2019, B'nai Brith attempted to have two speakers kicked off
the program, organized by McMaster Professor Rama Singh. One of the speakers targeted was Azeezah Kanji, an Islamic law scholar and
director of programming at the Toronto-based Noor Cultural Centre. The other was McMaster Professor Emeritus Dr. Atif Kubursi, an
economist specializing in oil and the Middle East and former Acting Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social
Commission for Western Asia. He is the recipient of the Canadian Centennial Medal for his outstanding academic contributions. Neither
of them was expected to even speak about Palestine at the event, but both had made statements critical of Israel in the past and
thus were accused of guilt by association. At B'nai Brith's urging, the Hamilton Jewish Federation
withdrew its
participation . The event went on without the Federation's participation but with those two speakers presenting.
Institutional Jewish organizations have tried for many years to get university presidents across the country to ban Israeli Apartheid
Week (IAW). One of the more aggressive campaigns against IAW has been at McMaster University. In 2020, several groups, including
the Jewish Defense League and Hillel Ontario
asked McMaster
University to outlaw the annual event , claiming it makes Jewish students on campus uncomfortable and unsafe. The university
declined to comply with the blanket request to shut down the activities. A spokesperson insisted that "The group organizing the event
in question is a student group registered with the McMaster Students Union [these] groups are governed by McMaster's Student Code
of Conduct, which promotes the safety and security of all students and encourages respect for others."
London
The University of Western Ontario's Student's Council
has a long
history of trying to de-platform campus organizations devoted to criticism of Israel. At first, it was Solidarity for Palestinian
Human Rights (SPHR), then UWO Public Interest Research Group (UWO-PIRG). One of the speakers that UWO-PIRG had sponsored (and presumably
offended the Student's Council) was renowned Jewish-Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, author of, among other books, "
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine
." The Ontario Human Rights Commission upheld three complaints against the university and one against the Student's Council and
required the Student's Council to apologize and to ratify the organizations.
Ottawa
Rehab Nazzal is a multidisciplinary artist of Palestinian origin based in Toronto, some of whose work deals with the harsh treatment
of Palestinians by Israel. Nazzal's 2014 exhibition "Invisible" at the Karsh-Masson Art Gallery on the ground floor of city hall
in Ottawa was publicly condemned by Israel's ambassador to Canada, and several pro-Israel groups, including B'nai Brith Canada demanded
that the mayor cancel the exhibition. The mayor refused, citing freedom of expression. But the city posted a disclaimer outside.
The groups also protested the fact that Nazzal had received a financial award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
of Canada. Nazzal later
spoke to a standing-room-only crowd in Ottawa and received a standing ovation. In 2015, an Israeli sniper shot Nazzal in the
leg while she was photographing a confrontation in Bethlehem. According to the Ottawa Citizen, Israeli spokesperson Eitan Weiss
commented , "It's very
difficult to ascertain what happens during a riot, because you have to imagine hundreds of people throwing rocks, Molotov cocktails,
using live firearms it's very difficult to prove that it ever happened, and it's very difficult to prove that it didn't happen."
Montreal
Zahra Kazemi was an Iranian-Canadian photographer who died in 2003 under mysterious circumstances in an Iranian jail after being
arrested for taking pictures of a demonstration in that country. In June 2005,
five photographs were pulled
from an exhibition of her work at the Côte St Luc (in Montreal) municipal library. The controversial photos were taken in Palestine.
A borough official explained that consideration of the borough's large Jewish population played a role in the decision. Kazemi's
son, Stephan Hachemi, refused to let the display continue without the censored photos, arguing that it was an insult to his mother's
legacy.
In January 2009, the Combined Jewish Appeal
cancelled
at the last minute a lecture at its Gelber Centre by the noted Israeli peace activist Jeff Halper. Halper was on a Canada-wide
tour to criticize Israel's Operation Cast Lead against Gaza, which killed 1,417 and wounded 5,303 Palestinians. A similar cancellation
of Halper occurred in Winnipeg, though Halper filled other auditoriums across the country.
In February 2010, pro-Israel organizations
attempted to block the CJPME
photo exhibit (see Calgary above) from being shown at the Cinema du Parc theatre. Lawyers for the cinema's landlord insisted that
the premises were only "for cinemagraphic [sic] use." The cinema, which had hosted other political displays in the past, refused
to back down, and the exhibit went on.
In November 2013, a Limmud Montreal conference (named "Le Mood") funded by the local Jewish federation
canceled
two presentations by Sarah Woolf , an activist behind "Renounce Birthright" (a website critical of junkets to Israel for Jewish
youth). One session was entitled "Where are all the radical Jews?" and another focussed on the history Jewish garment workers in
that city. Woolf and co-facilitator Aaron Lakoff wrote on Lakoff's blog: "Ultimately, we've been banned from speaking at Le Mood
because of our personal politics (or whatever Le Mood and Federation CJA perceive our respective politics to be), not based on the
content of our panels, which were reviewed, accepted, and scheduled months ago." In response to the de-platforming, Lakoff and Woolf
set up the presentations in a parking lot outside the main conference site and garnered a crowd of over 100 people.
Halifax
In October 2016, the Halifax Pride Annual General Meeting
entertained a motion from the group "Queer Arabs of Halifax." The resolution would disallow the distribution at the annual Pride
Fair of materials touting the state of Israel for its alleged LGBT-friendliness. QAH and its allies claimed that these materials
allowed for the 'pinkwashing' of Israel's violations of human rights against the Palestinians. Another group, the Nova Scotia Rainbow
Action Project, had collected over 500 names on a petition condemning the pinkwashing. In response, the Atlantic Jewish Council organized
hundreds of Jewish community members to attend the AGM to protest and disrupt the vote, although the vast majority of the interlopers
were not LGBTQ+. AGM organizers made the controversial decision to allow all attendees at the meeting to vote. This resulted in the
defeat of all Israel-critical resolutions and a walkout by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour) participants claiming,
"Straight white pride wins again." A Palestinian LGBTQ+ participant said the meeting takeover reminded him of the Israeli occupation.
Another commentator
summed it up thus : "This is a classic example of where one group hides behind the guise of free speech until the moment where
they can take their free speech and beat it over the head of everyone else."
During the 2018 Naim Ateek tour mentioned above, the Religious Studies Department of Saint Mary's University, one of the sponsors
of the Halifax event, received a letter from B'nai Brith Canada
demanding the cancellation of
the talk . The department, familiar with Ateek's work and repute, refused, and the event continued.
In June 2019, a Dartmouth, Nova Scotia NDP candidate standing for the 2019 federal election was discovered to have made some tweets
a year earlier comparing the Israeli shooting of Gazans in the "March of the Return" to the actions of Nazi Germany. Rana Zaman,
a tireless community activist, issued an apology with the help of IJV-Halifax, but the NDP federal office suggested she run it by
the Atlantic Jewish Council, the local institutional Jewish organization. The AJC had no response to the apology other than sending
Zaman a copy of the IHRA definition, which labels as automatically antisemitic "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy
to that of the Nazis." The NDP Federal office
removed
Zaman from the candidacy .
In December 2019, the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission bestowed a coveted "Individual Human Rights Award" on Zaman. The Atlantic
Jewish Council immediately began a campaign to have Zaman stripped of the award, and the
revocation followed a mere ten days later. Jewish institutional organizations refused to accept Zaman's original apology, insisting
that it was insincere.
Conclusion
All of the above de-platforming takes a lot of work. And it makes the pro-Israel lobby look like the bullies they are. Right now,
there is altogether too much messy debate. Consequently, the lobby wants to build a better mousetrap; one that will alleviate the
need to intervene each and every time there is an event or activity criticizing Israel. How much easier if the better mousetrap operates
to slam shut automatically, breaking the mouse's neck without untidy arguments and recrimination.
Such a better mousetrap is the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism. As Independent
Jewish Voices has pointed out , the IHRA definition is remarkably sloppy and
vague. But it does contain eleven "examples" of antisemitism, seven of which involve criticism of Israel.
The lobby is trying to get the IHRA definition adopted by legislatures, city councils, non-governmental organizations, student
unions, human rights bodies, police departments, universities, and any forum that could possibly be in a position to shut down or
sanction activity critical of Israel. We do not know whether or how the adoption of the IHRA definition by these bodies could actually
criminalize criticism of Israel. In Canada, after all, we still have freedom of expression under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
However, we have seen how the mere accusation of antisemitism -- accurate and deserved or entirely bogus -- has been used to hobble
political and other types of careers.
We have also seen how the IHRA definition has been used to punish people and organizations who have run afoul of it. The case
of the University of Winnipeg cited above is one example. Claiming to have employed the IHRA definition, the university's diversity
officer declared the meeting antisemitic, and the university apologized for allowing the meeting to take place.
We have seen that B'nai Brith Canada
employs the IHRA
definition to decide which occurrences should be added to their audit of antisemitic incidents.
Finally, we have seen that the increasingly open use of the term antisemitic to label those who criticize Israel could encumber
legitimate lawsuits for defamation by victims of that slur.
That is why defenders of Palestinian human rights and proponents of peace and justice in the Middle East need to double our vigilance
to ensure that the IHRA definition goes no further and that freedom of expression and sanity returns.
Outspoken British comedian Ricky Gervais has once again exposed, in his usual direct manner,
the escalating use of the term "hate speech" to crush any dissenting view from the mainstream
narratives has unleashed "a new weird sort of fascism."
In an interview with talkRADIO host Kevin O'Sullivan, Gervais dismissed the new 'trendy
myth' that the only people who want free speech want to use it to say terrible things:
"There's this new weird sort of fascism of people thinking they know what you can say and
what you can't say and it's a really weird thing that there's this new trendy myth that
people who want free speech want it to say awful things all the time, which just isn't true.
It protects everyone ."
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Critically, Gervais sees two catastrophic problems with the term 'hate speech':
" One, what constitutes hate speech? Everyone disagrees. There's no consensus on what hate
speech is."
" Two, who decides? And there's the real rub because obviously the people who think they
want to close down free speech because it's bad are the fascists. It's a really weird,
mixed-up idea that these people hide behind a shield of goodness."
Additionally, 'The Office' star points out that "social media amplifies
everything."
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"If you're mildly left-wing on Twitter you're suddenly Trotsky . If you're mildly
conservative you're Hitler and if you're centrist and you look at both arguments, you're a
coward and they both hate you,"
A n open
letter published by Harper's magazine, and signed by dozens of prominent writers
and public figures, has focused attention on the apparent dangers of what has been termed a new
"cancel culture."
The letter brings together an unlikely alliance of genuine leftists, such as Noam Chomsky
and Matt Karp, centrists such as J. K. Rowling and Ian Buruma, and neoconservatives such as
David Frum and Bari Weiss, all speaking out in defense of free speech.
Although the letter doesn't explicitly use the term "cancel culture," it is clearly what is
meant in the complaint about a "stifling" cultural climate that is imposing "ideological
conformity" and weakening "norms of open debate and toleration of differences."
It is easy to agree with the letter's generalized argument for tolerance and free and fair
debate. But the reality is that many of those who signed are utter hypocrites, who have shown
precisely zero commitment to free speech, either in their words or in their deeds.
Further, the intent of many them in signing the letter is the very reverse of their
professed goal: they want to stifle free speech, not protect it.
To understand what is really going on with this letter, we first need to scrutinize the
motives , rather than the substance, of the letter.
A New 'Illiberalism'
"Cancel culture" started as the shaming, often on social media, of people who were seen to
have said offensive things. But of late, cancel culture has on occasion become more tangible,
as the letter notes, with individuals fired or denied the chance to speak at a public venue or
to publish their work.
The letter denounces this supposedly new type of "illiberalism":
"We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it
is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived
transgressions of speech and thought.
Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged
inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are
investigated for quoting works of literature in class; The result has been to steadily narrow
the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the
price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their
livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in
agreement."
Tricky Identity Politics
David Frum in 2013. (Policy Exchange, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
The array of signatories is actually more troubling than reassuring. If we lived in a more
just world, some of those signing – like Frum, a former speechwriter for President George
W. Bush, and Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former U.S. State Department official – would be
facing a reckoning before a Hague war crimes tribunal for their roles in promoting
"interventions" in Iraq and Libya respectively, not being held up as champions of free
speech.
That is one clue that these various individuals have signed the letter for very different
reasons.
Chomsky signed because he has been a lifelong and consistent defender of the right to free
speech, even for those with appalling opinions such as Holocaust denial.
Frum, who coined the term "axis of evil" that rationalized the invasion of Iraq, and Weiss,
a New York Times columnist, signed because they have found their lives getting
tougher. True, it is easy for them to dominate platforms in the corporate media while
advocating for criminal wars abroad, and they have paid no career price when their analyses and
predictions have turned out to be so much dangerous hokum. But they are now feeling the
backlash on university campuses and social media.
Ian Buruma, at right, with the writer Martin Amis at 2007 New Yorker Festival. (CC BY-SA
2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Meanwhile, centrists like Buruma and Rowling have discovered that it is getting ever harder
to navigate the tricky terrain of identity politics without tripping up. The reputational
damage can have serious consequences.
Buruma famously lost his job as editor of The New York Review of Books two years
ago after after he published and defended an article that
violated the new spirit of the #MeToo movement. And Rowling made the mistake of thinking her
followers would be as fascinated by her traditional views on transgender issues as they are by
her Harry Potter books.
'Fake News, Russian Trolls'
But the fact that all of these writers and intellectuals agree that there is a price to be
paid in the new, more culturally sensitive climate does not mean that they are all equally
interested in protecting the right to be controversial or outspoken.
Chomsky, importantly, is defending free speech for all , because he correctly
understands that the powerful are only too keen to find justifications to silence those who
challenge their power. Elites protect free speech only in so far as it serves their interests
in dominating the public space.
If those on the progressive left do not defend the speech rights of everyone, even their
political opponents, then any restrictions will soon be turned against them. The Establishment
will always tolerate the hate speech of U.S. President Donald Trump or Brazilian President Jair
Bolsonaro over the justice speech of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders or Jeremy Corbyn, the former
leader of the Labour Party in the U.K.
By contrast, most of the rest of those who signed – the right-wingers and the
centrists – are interested in free speech for themselves and those like them .
They care about protecting free speech only in so far as it allows them to continue dominating
the public space with their views – something they were only too used to until a few
years ago, before social media started to level the playing field a little.
The center and the right have been fighting back ever since with claims that anyone who
seriously challenges the neoliberal status quo at home and the neoconservative one abroad is
promoting "fake news" or is a "Russian troll." This updating of the charge of being
"un-American" embodies cancel culture at its very worst.
Social Media Accountability
In other words, apart from the case of a few progressives, the letter is simply special
pleading – for a return to the status quo. And for that reason, as we shall see, Chomsky
might have been better advised not to have added his name, however much he agrees with the
letter's vague, ostensibly pro-free speech sentiments.
What is striking about a significant proportion of those who signed is their
self-identification as ardent supporters of Israel. And as Israel's critics know only too well,
advocates for Israel have been at the forefront of the cancel culture – from long before
the term was even coined.
For decades, pro-Israel activists have sought to silence anyone seen to be seriously
critiquing this small, highly militarized state, sponsored by the colonial powers, that was
implanted in a region rich with a natural resource, oil, needed to lubricate the global
economy, and at a terrible cost to its native, Palestinian population.
Nothing should encourage us to believe that zealous defenders of Israel among those signing
the letter have now seen the error of their ways. Their newfound concern for free speech is
simply evidence that they have begun to suffer from the very same cancel culture they have
always promoted in relation to Israel.
They have lost control of the "cancel culture" because of two recent developments: a rapid
growth in identity politics among liberals and leftists, and a new popular demand for
"accountability" spawned by the rise of social media.
Cancelling Israel's Critics
Former Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn at campaign rally in Glasgow, December 2019. (Jeremy
Corbyn, Flickr)
In fact, despite their professions of concern, the evidence suggests that some of those
signing the letter have been intensifying their own contribution to cancel culture in relation
to Israel, rather than contesting it.
That is hardly surprising. The need to counter criticism of Israel has grown more pressing
as Israel has more obviously become a pariah state. Israel has refused to countenance peace
talks with the Palestinians and it has intensified its efforts to realize long-harbored plans
to annex swaths of the West Bank in violation of international law.
Rather than allow "robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters" on Israel,
Israel's supporters have preferred the tactics of those identified in the letter as enemies of
free speech: "swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech
and thought."
Just ask Jeremy Corbyn, the former leader of the Labour Party who was reviled, along with
his supporters, as an anti-Semite – one of the worst smears imaginable – by several
people on the Harper's list, including Rowling and Weiss
. Such claims were promoted even though his critics could produce no actual evidence of an
antisemitism problem in the Labour party.
Similarly, think of the treatment of Palestinian solidarity activists who support a boycott
of Israel (BDS), modelled on the one that helped push South Africa's leaders into renouncing
apartheid. BDS activists too have been smeared as anti-Semites – and Weiss again has been
a prime
offender .
Pro-Israel counter demonstration against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions demonstration
outside School of Oriental and African Studies in London, April 2017. (Philafrenzy, CC BY-SA
4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
The incidents highlighted in the Harper's letter in which individuals have
supposedly been cancelled is trivial compared to the cancelling of a major political party and
of a movement that stands in solidarity with a people who have been oppressed for decades.
And yet how many of these free speech warriors have come forward to denounce the fact that
leftists -- including many Jewish anti-Zionists -- have been pilloried as anti-Semites to
prevent them from engaging in debates about Israel's behavior and its abuses of Palestinian
rights?
How many of them have decried the imposition of a new definition of anti-Semitism, by the
International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, that has been rapidly gaining ground in Western
countries?
That definition is designed to silence a large section of the left by prioritising the
safety of Israel from being criticised before the safety of Jews from being vilified and
attacked – something that even the lawyer who authored the definition has come to
regret .
Why has none of this "cancel culture" provoked an open letter to Harper's from
these champions of free speech?
Double-Edge Sword
The truth is that many of those who signed the letter are defending not free speech but
their right to continue dominating the public square – and their right to do so without
being held accountable.
Bari Weiss, before she landed a job at The Wall Street Journal and then The New
York Times , spent her student years trying to get Muslim professors
fired from her university – cancelling them – because of their criticism of
Israel. And she explicitly did so under the banner of "academic freedom," claiming pro-Israel
students felt intimidated in the classroom.
The New York Civil Liberties Union concluded that it was Weiss, not the professors, who was
the real threat to academic freedom. This was not some youthful indiscretion. In a book last
year Weiss cited her efforts to rid Columbia university of these professors as a formative
experience on which she still draws.
Weiss and many of the others listed under the letter are angry that the rhetorical tools
they used for so long to stifle the free speech of others have now been turned against them.
Those who lived for so long by the sword of identity politics – on Israel, for example
– are worried that their reputations may die by that very same sword – on issues of
race, sex and gender.
[Weiss just
quit her post at The New York Times , citing an illiberal environment. As part of
her full statement
she writes, "Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its
ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the
paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told
in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read
about the world and then draw their own conclusions."]
Narcissistic Concern
To understand how the cancel culture is central to the worldview of many of these writers
and intellectuals, and how blind they are to their own complicity in that culture, consider the
case of Jonathan Freedland, a columnist with the supposedly liberal-left British newspaper
The Guardian . Although Freedland is not among those signing the letter, he is very
much aligned with the centrists among them and, of course, supported the letter in an article
published in The Guardian.
Freedland, we should note, led the "cancel culture" campaign against the Labour Party
referenced above. He was one of the key figures in Britain's Jewish community who breathed life
into the anti-Semitism
smears against Corbyn and his supporters.
Jonathan Freedland in 2013. (Chatham House, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
But note the brief clip below. In it, Freedland's voice can be heard cracking as he explains
how he has been a victim of the cancel culture himself: he confesses that he has suffered
verbal and emotional abuse at the hands of Israel's most extreme apologists – those who
are even more unapologetically pro-Israel than he is.
He reports that he has been called a "kapo," the term for Jewish collaborators in the Nazi
concentration camps, and a "sonderkommando," the Jews who disposed of the bodies of fellow Jews
killed in the gas chambers. He admits such abuse "burrows under your skin" and "hurts
tremendously."
And yet, despite the personal pain he has experienced of being unfairly accused, of being
cancelled by a section of his own community, Freedland has been at the forefront of the
campaign to tar critics of Israel, including anti-Zionist Jews, as anti-Semites on the
flimsiest of evidence.
He is entirely oblivious to the ugly nature of the cancel culture – unless it
applies to himself . His concern is purely narcissistic. And so it is with the majority of
those who signed the letter.
Conducting a Monologue
The letter's main conceit is the pretence that "illiberalism" is a new phenomenon, that free
speech is under threat, and that the cancel culture only arrived at the moment it was given a
name.
That is simply nonsense. Anyone over the age of 35 can easily remember a time when
newspapers and websites did not have a talkback section, when blogs were few in number and
rarely read, and when there was no social media on which to challenge or hold to account "the
great and the good."
Writers and columnists like those who signed the letter were then able to conduct a
monologue in which they revealed their opinions to the rest of us as if they were Moses
bringing down the tablets from the mountaintop.
In those days, no one noticed the cancel culture – or was allowed to remark on it. And
that was because only those who held approved opinions were ever given a media platform from
which to present those opinions.
Before the digital revolution, if you dissented from the narrow consensus imposed by the
billionaire owners of the corporate media, all you could do was print your own primitive
newsletter and send it by post to the handful of people who had heard of you.
That was the real cancel culture. And the proof is in the fact that many of those formerly
obscure writers quickly found they could amass tens of thousands of followers – with no
help from the traditional corporate media – when they had access to blogs and social
media.
Silencing the Left
Occupy Wall Street protesters engaging in the "human microphone," Sept. 30 2011. (David
Shankbone, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Which brings us to the most troubling aspect of the open letter in Harper's . Under
cover of calls for tolerance, given credibility by Chomsky's name, a proportion of those
signing actually want to restrict the free speech of one section of the population – the
part influenced by Chomsky.
They are not against the big cancel culture from which they have benefited for so long. They
are against the small cancel culture – the new more chaotic, and more democratic, media
environment we currently enjoy – in which they are for the first time being held to
account for their views, on a range of issues including Israel.
Just as Weiss tried to get professors fired under the claim of academic freedom, many of
these writers and public figures are using the banner of free speech to discredit speech they
don't like, speech that exposes the hollowness of their own positions.
Their criticisms of "cancel culture" are really about prioritizing "responsible" speech,
defined as speech shared by centrists and the right that shores up the status quo. They want a
return to a time when the progressive left – those who seek to disrupt a manufactured
consensus, who challenge the presumed verities of neoliberal and neoconservative orthodoxy
– had no real voice.
The new attacks on "cancel culture" echo the attacks on Bernie Sanders' supporters, who were
framed as "Bernie Bros" – the evidence-free allegation that he attracted a rabble of
aggressive, women-hating men who tried to bully others into silence on social media.
Bernie Sanders' 2020 Campaign Co-chair Nina Turner at Los Angeles City Hall rally, March
2019. (Sara Mossman, Flickr)
Just as this claim was used to discredit Sanders' policies, so the center and the right now
want to discredit the left more generally by implying that, without curbs, they too will bully
everyone else into silence and submission through their "cancel culture."
If this conclusion sounds unconvincing, consider that President Donald Trump could easily
have added his name to the letter alongside Chomsky's. Trump used his recent Independence Day
speech at Mount Rushmore to make similar points to the Harper's letter. He at
least was explicit in equating "cancel culture" with what he called "far-left fascism":
"One of [the left's] political weapons is 'Cancel Culture' -- driving people from their
jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is
the very definition of totalitarianism This attack on our liberty, our magnificent liberty,
must be stopped, and it will be stopped very quickly."
Trump, in all his vulgarity, makes plain what the Harper's letter, in all its
cultural finery, obscures. That attacks on the new "cancel culture" are simply another front
– alongside supposed concerns about "fake news" and "Russian trolls" – in the
establishment's efforts to limit speech by the left.
Attention Redirected
This is not to deny that there is fake news on social media or that there are trolls, some
of them even Russian. Rather, it is to point out that our attention is being redirected, and
our concerns manipulated by a political agenda.
Despite the way it has been presented in the corporate media, fake news on social media has
been mostly a problem of the right. And the worst examples of fake news – and the most
influential – are found not on social media at all, but on the front pages of The
Wall Street Journal and The New York Times .
What genuinely fake news on Facebook has ever rivalled the lies justifying the invasion of
Iraq in 2003 that were knowingly peddled by a political elite and their stenographers in the
corporate media. Those lies led directly to more than a million Iraqi deaths, turned millions
more into refugees, destroyed an entire country, and fuelled a new type of nihilistic Islamic
extremism whose effects we are still feeling.
Most of the worst lies from the current period – those that have obscured or justified
U.S. interference in Syria and Venezuela, or rationalized war crimes against Iran, or approved
the continuing imprisonment of Julian Assange for exposing war crimes – can only be
understood by turning our backs on the corporate media and looking to experts who can rarely
find a platform outside of social media.
I say this as someone who has concerns about the fashionable focus on identity politics
rather than class politics. I say it also as someone who rejects all forms of cancel culture
– whether it is the old-style, "liberal" cancel culture that imposes on us a narrow
"consensus" politics (the Overton window), or the new "leftwing" cancel culture that too often
prefers to focus on easy cultural targets like Rowling than the structural corruption of
western political systems.
But those who are impressed by the letter simply because Chomsky's name is attached should
beware. Just as "fake news" has provided the pretext for Google and social media platforms to
change their algorithms to vanish leftwingers from searches and threads, just as "antisemitism"
has been redefined to demonise the left, so too the supposed threat of "cancel culture" will be
exploited to silence the left.
Protecting Bari Weiss and J K Rowling from a baying leftwing "mob" – a mob that that
claims a right to challenge their views on Israel or trans issues – will become the new
rallying cry from the Establishment for action against "irresponsible" or
"intimidating" speech.
Progressive leftists who join these calls out of irritation with the current focus on
identity politics, or because they fear being labelled an antisemite, or because they
mistakenly assume that the issue really is about free speech, will quickly find that they are
the main targets.
In defending free speech, they will end up being the very ones who are silenced.
UPDATE:
Noam Chomsky. (Duncan Rawlinson)
You don't criticize Chomsky however tangentially and respectfully – at least not from
a left perspective – without expecting a whirlwind of opposition from those who believe
he can never do any wrong.
But one issue that keeps being raised on my social media feeds in his defense is just plain
wrong-headed, so I want to quickly address it. Here's one my followers expressing the point
succinctly:
"The sentiments in the letter stand or fall on their own merits, not on the characters or
histories of some of the signatories, nor their future plans."
The problem, as I'm sure Chomsky would explain in any other context, is that this letter
fails not just because of the other people who signed it but on its merit too . And
that's because, as I explain above, it ignores the most oppressive and most established forms
of cancel culture, as Chomsky should have been the first to notice.
Highlighting the small cancel culture, while ignoring the much larger, Establishment-backed
cancel culture, distorts our understanding of what is at stake and who wields power.
Chomsky unwittingly just helped a group of mostly Establishment stooges skew our perceptions
of free speech problems so that we side with them against ourselves. There is no way that can
be a good thing.
UPDATE 2:
There are still people holding out against the idea that it harmed the left to have Chomsky
sign this letter. And rather than address their points individually, let me try another way of
explaining my argument:
Why has Chomsky not signed a letter backing the furor over "fake news," even though there is
some fake news on social media? Why has he not endorsed the "Bernie Bros" narrative, even
though doubtless there are some bullying Sanders supporters on social media? Why has he not
supported the campaign claiming the Labour Party has an anti-Semitism problem, even though
there are some anti-Semites in the Labour Party (as there are everywhere)?
He hasn't joined any of those campaigns for a very obvious reason – because he
understands how power works, and that on the left you hit up, not down. You certainly don't
cheerlead those who are up as they hit down.
Chomsky understands this principle only too well because here he is setting it out in
relation to Iran:
"Suppose I criticise Iran. What impact does that have? The only impact it has is in
fortifying those who want to carry out policies I don't agree with, like bombing."
For exactly the same reason he has not joined those pillorying Iran – because his
support would be used for nefarious ends – he shouldn't have joined this campaign. He
made a mistake. He's fallible.
Also, this isn't about the left eating itself. Really, Chomsky shouldn't be the issue. The
issue should be that a bunch of centrists and right-wingers used this letter to try to
reinforce a narrative designed to harm the left, and lay the groundwork for further curbs on
its access to social media. But because Chomsky signed the letter, many more leftists are now
buying into that narrative – a narrative intended to harm them. That's why Chomsky's role
cannot be ignored, nor his mistake glossed over.
UPDATE 3:
Apologies for yet another update. I had not anticipated how many ways people on the left
might find to justify this letter.
Here's the latest reasoning. Apparently, the letter sets an important benchmark that can in
future be used to protect free speech by the left when we are threatened with being
"cancelled" – as, for example, with the anti-Semitism smears that were used against
anti-Zionist Jews and other critics of Israel in the Labour Party.
I should hardly need to point out how naive this argument is. It completely ignores how
power works in our societies: who gets to decide what words mean and how principles are
applied. This letter won't help the left because "cancel culture" is being framed – by
this letter, by Trump, by the media – as a "loony left" problem. It is a new iteration of
the "politically correct gone mad" discourse, and it will be used in exactly the same way.
It won't help Steven Salaita, sacked from a university job because he criticized Israel's
killing of civilians in Gaza, or Chris Williamson, the Labour MP expelled because he defended
the party's record on being anti-racist.
The "cancel culture" furor isn't interested in the fact that they were "cancelled." Worse
still, this moral panic turns the whole idea of cancelling on its head: it is Salaita and
Williamson who are accused – and found guilty – of doing the cancelling, of
cancelling Israel and Jews.
Israel's supporters will continue to win this battle by claiming that criticism of Israel
"cancels" that country ("wipes it off the map"), "cancels" Israel's Jewish population ("drives
them into the sea"), and "cancels" Jews more generally ("denies a central component of modern
Jewish identity").
Greater awareness of "cancel culture" would not have saved Corbyn from the anti-Semitism
smears because the kind of cancel culture that smeared Corbyn is never going to be defined as
"cancelling."
For anyone who wishes to see how this works in practice, watch Guardian columnist
Owen Jones cave in – as he has done so often – to the power dynamics of the "cancel
culture" discourse in this interview with Sky News. I actually agree with almost everything
Jones says in this clip, apart from his joining yet again in the witch-hunt against Labour's
anti-Zionists. He doesn't see that witch-hunt as "cancel culture," and neither will anyone else
with a large platform like his to protect:
"... The cancel culture -- the phenomenon of removing or canceling people, brands or shows from the public domain because of offensive statements or ideologies -- is not a threat to the ruling class. Hundreds of corporations, nearly all in the hands of white executives and white board members, enthusiastically pumped out messages on social media condemning racism and demanding justice after George Floyd was choked to death by police in Minneapolis. ..."
The cancel culture -- the phenomenon of removing or canceling people, brands or shows from the public domain because of offensive
statements or ideologies -- is not a threat to the ruling class. Hundreds of corporations, nearly all in the hands of white executives
and white board members, enthusiastically pumped out messages on social media condemning racism and demanding justice after George
Floyd was choked to death by police in Minneapolis. Police, which along with the prison system are one of the primary instruments
of social control over the poor, have taken the knee, along with Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of the
serially criminal JPMorgan Chase , where
only 4 percent of the top executives are black . Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world whose corporation, Amazon, paid no
federal income taxes last year and who fires workers that attempt to unionize and tracks warehouse laborers as if they were prisoners,
put a "Black Lives Matter" banner on Amazon's home page.
The rush by the ruling elites to profess solidarity with the protestors and denounce racist rhetoric and racist symbols, supporting
the toppling of Confederate statues and banning the Confederate flag, are symbolic assaults on white supremacy. Alone, these gestures
will do nothing to reverse the institutional racism that is baked into the DNA of American society. The elites will discuss race.
They will not discuss class.
We must be wary of allowing those wielding the toxic charge of racism, no matter how well intentioned their motives, to decide
who has a voice and who does not. Public shaming and denunciation, as any student of the Russian, French or Chinese revolutions knows,
is one that leads to absurdism and finally despotism. Virulent racists, such as Richard Spencer, exist. They are dangerous. But racism
will not end until we dismantle a class system that was created to empower oligarchic oppression and white supremacy. Racism will
not end until we defund the police and abolish the world's largest system of mass incarceration. Racism will not end until we invest
in people rather than systems of control. This means reparations for African-Americans, the unionization of workers, massive government
jobs programs, breaking up and nationalizing the big banks along with the for-profit health services, transportation sector, the
internet, privatized utilities and the fossil fuel industry, as well as a Green New Deal and the slashing of our war expenditures
by 75 percent.
Occupy Wall Street Sept. 25, 2011. (David Shankbone via Flickr)
Politically correct speech and symbols of inclusiveness, without a concerted assault on corporate power, will do nothing to change
a system that by design casts the poor and working poor, often people of color, aside -- Karl Marx called them surplus labor -- and
forces them into a life of misery and a brutal criminal caste system.
The cancel culture, with its public shaming on social media, is the boutique activism of the liberal elites. It allows faux student
radicals to hound and attack those deemed to be racist or transphobic, before these "radicals" graduate to work for corporations
such as Goldman Sachs, which last year paid $9 million in fines to settle federal allegations of racial and gender pay bias. Self-styled
Marxists in the academy have been pushed out of economic departments and been reborn as irrelevant cultural and literary critics,
employing jargon so obscure as to be unreadable. These "radical" theorists invest their energy in linguistic acrobatics and multiculturalism,
with branches such as feminism studies, queer studies and African-American studies. The inclusion of voices often left out of the
traditional academic canon certainly enriches the university. But multiculturalism, moral absolutism and the public denunciations
of apostates, by themselves, too often offer escape routes from critiquing and attacking the class structures and systems of economic
oppression that exclude and impoverish the poor and the marginal.
The hedge fund managers, oligarchs and corporate CEOs on college trustee boards don't care about Marxist critiques of Joseph Conrad.
They do care if students are being taught to dissect the lies of the neoliberal ideology used as a cover to orchestrate the largest
transference of wealth upwards in American history.
The cancel culture, shorn of class politics, is the parlor game of the overeducated. If we do not examine, as Theodor Adorno wrote,
the "societal play of forces that operate beneath the surface of political forms," we will be continually cursed with a more ruthless
and sophisticated form of corporate control, albeit one that is linguistically sensitive and politically correct.
"Stripped of a radical idiom, robbed of a utopian hope, liberals and leftists retreat in the name of progress to celebrate diversity,"
historian Russell Jacoby writes. "With few ideas on how a future should be shaped, they embrace all ideas. Pluralism becomes a catchall,
the alpha and omega of political thinking. Dressed up as multicultural, it has become the opium of disillusioned intellectuals, the
ideology of an era without an ideology."
The cudgel of racism, as I have experienced, is an effective tool to shut down debate. Students for Justice in Palestine organizations,
which almost always include Jewish students, are being banned on college campuses in the name of fighting racism. Activists in these
outlawed groups are often barred from holding any student leadership positions on campus. Professors that dare to counter the Zionist
narrative, such as the Palestinian American scholar Steven Salaita, have had job offers rescinded, been fired or denied tenure and
dismissed. Norman Finkelstein, one of the most important scholars on the Israel-Palestine conflict, has been ruthlessly targeted
by the Israel lobby throughout his career, making it impossible for him to get tenure or academic appointments. Never mind, that
he is not only Jewish but the son of Holocaust survivors. Jews, in this game, are branded as racists, and actual racists, such as
Donald Trump, because they back Israel's refusal to recognize Palestinian rights, are held up as friends of the Jewish people.
May Day 2015 demonstration at Union Square, New York City. (All-Nite Images, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
I have long been a target of the Israeli lobby. The lobby, usually working through Hillel Houses on college campuses, which function
as little more than outposts of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), does not attempt to address my enumeration of the
war crimes committed by Israel, many of which I witnessed, the egregious flouting by Israel of international law, exacerbated by
the plans to annex up to 30 percent of the West Bank, or the historical record ignored and distorted by the lobby to justify Jewish
occupation of a country that from the 7 th century until 1948 was Muslim. The lobby prefers not to deal in the world of
facts. It misuses the trope of anti-Semitism to ensure that those who speak up for Palestinian rights and denounce Israeli occupation
are not invited to events on Israel-Palestine conflict, or are disinvited to speak after invitations have been sent out, as happened
to me at the University of Pennsylvania, among other venues.
It does not matter that I spent seven years in the Middle East, or that I was the Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York
Times , living for weeks at a time in the Israel-occupied territories. It does not matter that I speak Arabic. My voice and the
voices of those, especially Palestinians, who document the violations of Palestinian civil rights are canceled out by the mendacious
charge that we are racists. I doubt most of the college administrators who agree to block our appearances believe we are racists,
but they don't also want the controversy. Zionism is the cancel culture on steroids.
The Israel lobby, whose interference in our electoral process dwarfs that of any other country, including Russia, is now attempting
to criminalize the activities of those, such as myself, who support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The lobby,
with its huge financial clout, is pushing state legislatures, in the name of fighting anti-Semitism, to use anti-boycott laws and
executive orders to punish companies and individuals that promote BDS. Twenty-seven states have so far enacted laws or policies that
penalize businesses, organizations and individuals for supporting BDS.
AIPAC gathering. (Wikimedia Commons)
The debate about the excesses of cancel culture was most recently ignited by a letter signed by 153 prominent and largely privileged
writers and intellectuals in Harper's Magazine
, a publication for educated, white liberals. Critics of the letter
argue , correctly, that "nowhere
in it do the signatories mention how marginalized voices have been silenced for generations in journalism, academia, and publishing."
These critics also point out, correctly, that signatories include those, such as The New York Times columnist David Brooks
and Malcolm Gladwell, with access to huge media platforms and who face no danger of being silenced. They finally
note that a few of the signatories
are the most vicious proponents of the Zionist cancel culture, including The New York Times editor Bari Weiss, who
led campaigns while at Columbia University to destroy the careers of Arab professors ; literary scholar Cary Nelson,
who was one of those who denounced the Palestinian American scholar Salaita as a racist; and political scientist Yascha Mounk,
who has attacked
Rep. Ilhan Omar as an anti-Semite.
I find the cancel culture and its public denunciations as distasteful as those who signed the letter. But these critics are battling
a monster of their own creation. The institutional and professional power of those targeted by the Harper's letter is insignificant,
especially when set against that of the signatories or the Israel lobby. Those singled out for attack pose little threat to the systems
of entrenched power, which the signatories ironically represent, and indeed are more often its victims. I suspect this is the reason
for the widespread ire the letter provoked.
The most ominous threats to free speech and public debate do not come from the cancel culture of the left, which rarely succeeds
in removing its targets from power, despite a few high profile
firings
such as James Bennet , who oversaw a series of tone-deaf editorial decisions as the opinion page editor at The New York Times.
These corporate forces, which assure us that Black Lives Matter, understand that the left's witch hunts are a harmless diversion.
Corporations have seized control of the news industry and turned it into burlesque. They have corrupted academic scholarship.
They make war on science and the rule of law. They have used their wealth to destroy our democracy and replace it with a system of
legalized bribery. They have created a world of masters and serfs who struggle at subsistence level and endure crippling debt peonage.
The commodification of the natural world by corporations has triggered an ecocide that is pushing the human species closer and closer
towards extinction. Anyone who attempts to state these truths and fight back was long ago driven from the mainstream and relegated
to the margins of the internet by Silicon Valley algorithms. As cancel culture goes, corporate power makes the Israel lobby look
like amateurs.
The current obsession with moral purity, devoid of a political vision and incubated by self-referential academics and educated
elites, is easily co-opted by the ruling class who will say anything, as long as the mechanisms of corporate control remain untouched.
We have enemies. They run Silicon Valley and sit on corporate boards. They make up the two ruling political parties. They manage
the war industry. They chatter endlessly on corporate-owned airwaves about trivia and celebrity gossip. Our enemies are now showering
us with politically correct messages. But until they are overthrown, until we wrest power back from our corporate masters, the most
insidious forms of racism in America will continue to flourish.
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times
, where he served as the Middle East bureau chief and Balkan bureau chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for
The Dallas Morning News , The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He wrote a weekly column for the progressive website
Truthdig for 14 years until he was fired along with all of the editorial staff in March 2020. [Hedges and the staff had gone
on strike earlier in the month to protest the publisher's attempt to fire the Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer, demand an end to a series
of unfair labor practices and the right to form a union.] He is the host of the Emmy Award-nominated RT America show "On Contact."
:::stands up slowly::: :::starts a slow clap::: Reading Chris Hedges is like dancing with the truth. Well done, sir.
Chumpsky , July 14, 2020 at 19:34
Cancel culture comes across as more of a form of woke guerilla marketing than as a phenomenon supported by the economically
exploited. Ex. all the FAANG companies that are essentially propping up the stock market – see how quickly they've embraced this
"culture" when they realized it was excellent for business.
IMO, such is a trend, and it too, will pass -- when folks realize that the powers that be have hijacked their ideas for profit.
Lesson learned: when fringe goes mainstream it's all over – 1960's redux.
Litchfield , July 14, 2020 at 17:04
"I find the cancel culture and its public denunciations as distasteful as those who signed the letter. But these critics are
battling a monster of their own creation. The institutional and professional power of those targeted by the Harper's letter is
insignificant, especially when set against that of the signatories or the Israel lobby. Those singled out for attack pose little
threat to the systems of entrenched power, which the signatories ironically represent, and indeed are more often its victims.
I suspect this is the reason for the widespread ire the letter provoked."
Basically I agree with Hedges. But I cannot follwo what he is saying in this graf.
Also this:
"As cancel culture goes, corporate power makes the Israel lobby look like amateurs."
What? I thought the beginning portion of the piece was about the power of AIPAC and other Israel Lobby entities to shape narrative
and cancel out those who defend Palestinian rights.
IMO and for my understanding t he essay wanders toward the end until I am not sure who Hedges thinks is doing the actual canceling
and who is actually powerful: Israel lobby? corporate interests? Misguided young people?
Andrew Thomas , July 14, 2020 at 15:43
A beautifully written argument. Cheers to Chris Hedges and Robert Scheer and Consortium News.
Great article as always from Chris Hedges. Jonathan Cook also has an excellent article published today at Global Research regarding
the open letter from Harper's. Censorship is never the answer.
firstpersoninfinite , July 14, 2020 at 13:51
Chris Hedges and Cornel West are always worth listening to and/or reading. Very pleased to have the actual situation with "cancel
culture" brought into light with such clarity. We are living in the rarefied air of late-stage capitalism, in which an identifying
feature is more important than our collective humanity. When someone argues over their right to their particular piece of pie
while arguing against sharing the whole pie, I can't tell if they're an academic or a billionaire. All I hear is the ca-ching
of people protecting the last scraps thrown to them by an inhuman system.
DW Bartoo , July 14, 2020 at 13:34
Chris Hedges, in this article, lays out substantial portions of the many corruptions people of conscience and actual principle
must confront if a sane, humane, and sustainable global human society is to be established.
He briefly suggests that, in academia in particular, there are to be found very few articulated visions of what that society
could, should, and must be premised upon, how it might function, and what forms of critically necessary participatory democracy,
guiding such a society, would look, and feel, like.
He makes very clear that symbolic "progress" is simply a rhetorical deceit employed to ensure that the currently destructive,
and fully corrupt, "system" may prevail, even as many are lulled into believing that "things" are "improving", that semantic fiddling
will keep the fire, next time, harmlessly contained and its energy bent and dissipated into meaningless gesture.
As Hedges points out, were universities, indeed, all of education, dedicated to developing critical thinking, rather than to
breathlessly proclaiming the sandbox "politics" of childish bullies as being highly evolved example of social competence, or of
praising private equity as proof that vulture capitalism is the "end of history", or of touting Panglossian pronouncements of
U$ian virtue and exceptionalism as inevitably placing all of humankind in the pinker regions of a rose-colored present, then the
young might, intentionally, be provided with the tools of actually comprehending the massive fraud and corruption which controls
and curtails the lives of most human beings on this planet, to the immense benefit of approximately two thousand kakistocratic
elites.
In other articles, over the years, Hedges has stressed, time and again, that there is no guarantee of success in the struggle
which must be undertaken if humanity is to have any future at all.
Some may regard such sober assessment as "negative" or even "defeatist".
However, considering what we are up against, beyond the relatively "easy" target of symbols, it is the deeper recognition that
Hedges provides, which is the first real step toward understanding what must be changed and why.
And, unless, there is a clearly articulated destination, a coherent idea of where we wish to arrive, of the pathways, maps,
and a developed sense of the terrain that must be crossed, fraught, as it will be, with pitfalls and land mines of distraction,
and of being maliciously led astray, with "movements" being absorbed into dead end detours and dissipation, then a very real risk
of going nowhere, of becoming disoriented and fatally lost, is more than likely.
We may not envision defeat, yet it is foolhardy to assume success.
As there are, quite literally, no existing forums for such discussions and considerations as we must enjoin, it is to be hoped
that "education" will be understood as a group effort which, of necessity, involves listening quite as much as talking.
Frankly, we are not even to square #1, yet.
Getting there will not be easy.
And that, rather than toppling symbols, is only the beginning.
Clear strategy must evolve, which cannot happen until organization with the intent of engaging a coherent sense of collective
plight is first undertaken.
This process is not about saviors or awaiting some "one" who will magically provide a guaranteed plan of success.
Rather, it is about the hard slog of getting from the untenable moment of increasing precarity, to an shared awareness of individual
competence and wholeness, among the many.
That is the basis of the power and energy which we must bring into being.
We must find it in each of our selves and then encourage it in each other.
That may well sound both trite and obvious.
Yet it leads to a beginning, not of following, but of becoming.
James Whitney , July 14, 2020 at 13:13
Thanks to Chris Hedges for this informative article.
"Twenty-seven states have so far enacted laws or policies that penalize businesses, organizations and individuals for supporting
BDS."
BDS is also illegal in France since 2015 (not the fault of the dreadful president Macron, it was the "socialist" Hollande president
at that time). A reference is
Michael McCaffrey
'Guardians of the Galaxy' (2014) Dir: James Gunn © Marvel Studios, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures 42 Follow RT on
The movie star has kept silent about his political beliefs, but the two-bit thought police Thanoses of Twitter think they can read his mind and believe he is an evil Trump supporter.
Monty Python's classic 'The Life of Brian' relentlessly mocked Christianity. Now we must do the same thing to the Church of Woke
Anti-Trump demonstrators march to Black Lives Matter plaza while joining a counter protest against "Million MAGA March" in Washington, DC © Getty Images / Probal Rashid/LightRocket 27 Follow RT on
In the left's victim culture, Eva Longoria's accused of 'anti-blackness' for calling Latinas the 'real heroines' in beating Trump
People of Vinnytsia searching for relatives among the exhumed victims of the Vinnytsia massacre , 1943
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Soviet Union portal
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