Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for January 5, 2021

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-29T23:58:00+00:00

Scunthorpe again: Facebook apologizes after suspending users for referring to Plymouth Hoe, a UK tourist spot

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-29T20:53:56+00:00

Though the US has separation of church and state, we have long been accustomed to American Christianity being consonant with American patriotism. But close Christian observers of American life have wondered for the last couple of decades — at least in my experience — if and when the day will come when being a faithful Christian will require one to oppose the US government and the American system. As America de-Christianizes, what was once unthinkable by conservative Christians is now fast moving from the fringes to the mainstream of our thinking.

Catholic World Report has published a blockbuster interview with Cardinal Gerhard Müller, formerly the head of the Catholic Church’s doctrinal office (before the more liberal Pope Francis dismissed him), in which Müller has shocking but important things to say about this. The cardinal said:

“Now the U.S., with its conglomerated political, media and economic power, stands at the head of the most subtly brutal campaign to de-Christianize Western culture in the last one hundred years.”

[...]

Cardinal Müller is right about the phony reconciliation offered by the Left. It’s typically, “Submit to us, and then you will have peace.” This is why conservatives who object to whatever progressives say is the next radical change they want to make to society stand condemned as aggressors in the culture war. It’s not aggression if you’re defending yourself!

We can see now the beginnings of a campaign underway to define conservative Christianity as “Christian nationalist” in the media. Let’s be clear: they are not entirely wrong to point to the destructive parts of this movement. I wrote in this space last month my strong criticism of the Jericho March, which was aggressively Christian-nationalist. I oppose uniting American national identity with Christianity. It’s bad for the Church, and it’s bad for the country.

That said, what the Left is pushing for, and is getting, in an American version of the French policy of laïcité — a hard secularism that pushes religion hard to the margins of public life. The only kind of Christianity that is going to be tolerated is Joe Biden’s kind: the sort that doesn’t contradict anything that secular progressives want. There’s a reason why our media, which heretofore furrowed its collective brow over the religious beliefs of Trump administration appointees, are falling all over themselves to highlight Biden’s Catholicism. They know Biden is tame. And they know that Biden gives cover to the anti-Christian policies that they advocate.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-29T16:50:34+00:00

Biden secretary of state says he will allow U.S. embassies to fly pride flag, affirms commitment to LGBT agenda

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-29T14:37:01+00:00

Social Justice Culture and Toxic Femininity

Western culture, we’re told, is suffused with toxic masculinity. Traditionally masculine traits like strength, reticence and stoicism have degenerated into misogyny and violence, which now pervade our cultural norms and social systems. Public institutions, the media and members of mainstream society, so social justice leftist thinking goes, are riddled with these dangerous male attitudes.

[...]

But if we are going to describe toxic masculinity as the negative manifestation of male traits, some of our societal problems must be the negative expression of female traits.

Characteristics more common to one sex than the other certainly exist. Individuals vary, but men are predominately more aggressive, for example, and women are generally more empathetic. If a man or woman suffers from a psychopathology, these differences can manifest in distinct forms of antisocial behaviour.

We don’t speak of toxic femininity—and I don’t believe we should—but if we were to imagine the worst manifestation of typically female attributes, I think it would look a lot like today’s social justice culture.

[...]

In lieu of direct combat, a typically masculine strategy, those at the vanguards of these social assassinations avoid physical risk and exertion by simply expelling those with whom they disagree.

This is generally a female approach to antisocial behaviour. Rather than violent confrontation, women tend to engage in reputation destruction and social exclusion, seeking to destroy the status of their rivals rather than physically defeat them.

Several studies have suggested an evolutionary basis for this. In Stockley and Campbell’s interdisciplinary study of female competition and aggression, they suggest that females are wired to survive, compete for preferred mates and reproduce. They therefore target rivals through lower risk, indirect competitive strategies, such as:

refusal to cooperate with them, destruction of their reputation (so that others will also refuse cooperation) and, ultimately, exclusion from the group. Indirect aggression (the use of pejorative gossip and social exclusion) is women’s preferred aggressive tactic. Because harm is delivered circuitously and because it is executed simultaneously by several members of the community, it is a low-risk strategy.

This isn’t just a human tendency. In chimpanzee communities, for example, punishment often involves evicting an adversary from the social group. While male chimpanzees may compete for dominance within their communities, they ultimately seek to maintain the unity of their group in order to ensure victory over hostile surrounding groups. By contrast, female chimpanzees primarily associate with their offspring, and only form temporary alliances in order to oust newcomers or low-ranking community females.

Social exclusion is more costly for women than for men. Several studies have explored the benefits of indirect aggression as a female tactic, suggesting that “the strong bonds between women and their emotional interdependence make victimisation by indirect aggression a particularly painful experience, leading to depression and even suicide.” Women’s’ heart rates have even been shown to increase more than men’s in response to social exclusion. This strategy is therefore both utilised and experienced more frequently by females than by males. Cancel culture is therefore the embodiment of a predominately female aggressive tactic.

The whole thing is worth a read even if the author writes as if allergic to brevity, IMO.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-28T19:24:20+00:00

Newsweek edits 2015 news article to justify recently-published hit-piece [on Tom Cotton]

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-28T18:52:09+00:00

It’s official: Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson all OUT as names for San Francisco schools

Last October, the San Francisco Unified School District’s School Names Advisory Committee, formed in 2018, noted that over 40 buildings named after people with connections to “slavery, genocide [and] oppression” could be affected.

Other considerations included “anyone directly involved in the colonization of people,” “those who exploit workers/people,” and “those who are known racists and/or white supremacists and/or espoused racist beliefs.”

Yesterday, the school board approved the renaming of 44 schools, including Abraham Lincoln and George Washington High Schools, and Thomas Jefferson Elementary School.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the vote was 6-1. The majority noted the renaming effort “is timely and important, given the country’s reckoning with a racist past.”

School board member Mark Sanchez added “It’s a message to our families, our students and our community. It’s not just symbolic. It’s a moral message.”

Critics of the renaming effort said the School Names Advisory Committee was “not thorough,” using sites such as Wikipedia and cherry-picked sources instead of “academics, historical records or in-depth research.” The committee reportedly didn’t even know whether Roosevelt Middle School was named after our 26th president … or 32nd.

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-28T15:43:31+00:00

Germany: Anti-immigration AfD party labeled 'suspected case', paves way for mass surveillance of members in Saxony-Anhalt

In a case that raises questions about civil liberties and democratic norms in Germany, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Saxony-Anhalt has classified the Alternative for Germany party (AfD) as a "suspected case", which means German intelligence services are permitted to place the 2,200 party members in the eastern state under extreme surveillance.

As the Mitteldeutsche Zeitung reported, this surveillance includes, among other things, the recruitment and use of informants, the tracking of financial flows, as well as wiretapping, reading, and monitoring the communication of AfD members and officials.

After Thuringia and Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt is the third state in which the party will be observed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as a "suspected case", according to Junge Freiheit. All three eastern states are where support for the AfD are the strongest in Germany. The report indicates that this status has been in place since Jan. 12. As a reason behind its decision, the Office accused the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt of attacks on human dignity and rejecting the democratic rule of law.

At the same time, the move is expected to have a chilling effect on the party and intimidate its supporters, especially members who now would have to fear constant monitoring of their private communications. While the AfD garners only 10 percent of support in nationwide polls, in Saxony-Anhalt, the party earned over 27 percent in the 2019 elections, making it the second stronger party in that German state.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-28T00:16:38+00:00

Discord bans WallStreetBets server for 'hateful and discriminatory content'. A complete coincidence, no doubt.

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-27T21:03:57+00:00

Trans activists are hounding women out of public life

The New Year Honours list included an OBE for Kathleen Stock, a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex. Recognised for her services to universities and the higher education sector, Stock’s achievement was something that should have been celebrated by fellow academics. Instead, hundreds of her peers wrote an open letter denouncing her and many activists began to harass her. Why? Because Stock believes that people cannot change their sex.

This might sound like just another row between academics that has no relevance to the outside world. But it is emblematic of a much wider – and more sinister – phenomenon: the hounding of women who dare speak out on trans rights. Across our public institutions women are being harassed and, in some instances, fired for not adhering to the new gender identity orthodoxy.

It is possible that you may have heard Stock’s name mentioned alongside other female professors like Selina Todd and Alice Sullivan for the simple reason that they have appeared in the press following spats about being ‘cancelled’ or ‘de-platformed’. Their opponents often cynically point to the media’s interest in these cases – even to articles such as this one – as evidence that feminist academics aren’t really being cancelled. After all, how can you cancel someone when they are being openly defended in a national newspaper? But this is a deliberate distortion tactic, used to downplay the seriousness of what is going on.

The treatment of these women is merely a high-profile symptom of a larger social affliction. Women like Stock, Todd and Sullivan have, in the past, been forced to have security guards accompany them when speaking in public – and they’re the lucky ones. For there are countless young, often working-class women and women of colour, that do not have a public profile, who have lost jobs, been bullied and labelled bigots and transphobes.

This debate has become so toxic that across the board people are afraid to speak out for fear of losing their jobs, whether they are nurses, midwives, teachers, public sector workers or civil servants. The situation has become so extreme, in fact, that even staff in the Gender Identity Development Service may have felt unable to speak out for fear of being disciplined, as David Bell told Channel 4 last week

Before the ideology of trans activists took hold in elite universities, many turned a blind eye because they tended not to care about grassroots feminists being targeted. Some initially went along with the notion that those accused were anti-trans but defended our right to speak. Others, particularly in Gender Studies departments, took a different approach, labelling feminist activists and campaigners ‘transphobic’. But look where this has got us – women are now afraid to speak for fear of being attacked, harassed, hounded, and fired.

We need to think about the world that this approach has led to. Isn’t now the time to speak out?

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-27T20:20:04+00:00

Poll: Majority of GOP Voters Think Donald Trump Should Start a New Party

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-27T19:36:24+00:00

[Glenn Greenwald] Reflecting the Authoritarian Climate, Washington Will Remain Militarized Until At Least March

Washington, DC has been continuously militarized beginning the week leading up to Joe Biden’s inauguration, when 20,000 National Guard troops were deployed onto the streets of the nation’s capital. The original justification was that this show of massive force was necessary to secure the inauguration in light of the January 6 riot at the Capitol.

But with the inauguration over and done, those troops remain and are not going anywhere any time soon. Working with federal law enforcement agencies, the National Guard Bureau announced on Monday that between 5,000 and 7,000 troops will remain in Washington until at least mid-March.

The rationale for this extraordinary, sustained domestic military presence has shifted several times, typically from anonymous U.S. law enforcement officials. The original justification — the need to secure the inaugural festivities — is obviously no longer operative.

So the new claim became that the impeachment trial of former President Trump that will take place in the Senate in February necessitated military reinforcements. On Sunday, Politico quoted “four people familiar with the matter” to claim that “Trump’s upcoming Senate impeachment trial poses a security concern that federal law enforcement officials told lawmakers last week requires as many as 5,000 National Guard troops to remain in Washington through mid-March.”

So we're deploying troops to the capital to suppress protests during a show trial of the president's political enemies? I'm so glad we voted out the dictator!

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-27T19:05:15+00:00

Senator Ed Markey claims Facebook groups are “echo-chambers of misinformation,” demands more censorship

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-27T14:49:19+00:00

Agent Fired from Literary Agency for Using Parler and Gab

In a series of tweets posted Monday morning, De Chiara wrote that the agency decided to terminate Oefelein after her use of Parler and Gab was brought to the agency's attention. The tweets were initially accessible to the public, but by late Tuesday afternoon they were listed as protected. A notice on Twitter said access to the tweets is granted only to De Chiara's approved followers.

"The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency was distressed to discover this morning, January 25th, that one of our agents has been using the social media platforms Gab and Parler. We do not condone this activity, and we apologize to anyone who has been affected or offended by this," De Chiara wrote. "The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency has in the past and will continue to ensure a voice of unity, equality, and one that is on the side of social justice."

"As of this morning, Colleen Oefelein is no longer an agent at The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency," De Chiara's Twitter thread concluded.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-26T20:14:02+00:00

Bookmark this one for the next time you're wondering "How could journalists be this fucking stupid?" BBC Trains Staff How to Drink WATER in One-Hour ‘Wellness’ Course

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-26T19:51:03+00:00

Why are we protecting the feelings of rapists?

Earlier this week details emerged of a rape committed by Michelle Winter, a man who identifies as a transgender woman. British law is clear, according to the Sexual Offences Act (2003) rape is a crime that can only be committed by a man using his penis. Winter was referred to by the judge as a dangerous individual, with a ‘clear propensity to violence’ and the attack was described in court as leaving Winter’s female victim with ‘recurring nightmares’. Court documents detailing the case state: ‘She [Winter] was found guilty of rape and assault occasioning actual bodily harm.’ It is not clear whether Winter will serve time in the male or female prison estate.

Aside from refreshingly clear local reporting in the Cambridge Independent, the mainstream media persisted in referring to the convicted rapist with female pronouns as per his preference. Until forced into a rewrite thanks to a social-media backlash, the original headline in the Metro ran ‘Transgender woman jailed for 15 years for raping another woman’ – the word ‘another’ suggesting no significant difference between men who identify as women, and actual women.

[...]

Irrespective of the crime committed, the ‘Equal Treatment Bench Book’, the guide to which judges refer when presiding on matters of equality, urges ‘respect for a person’s gender identity’ by using ‘appropriate terms of address (Mr, Mrs, Ms), pronouns (he / she) and possessives (his / her). Nonbinary people may prefer to be referred to in gender-neutral terms (eg Mx, they, their)’. As such the famously fusty members of the judiciary are advised to refer to those accused of committing rape, a crime which can legally only be committed by men, according to their stated gender identity. This is clearly nonsensical and distressing for victims.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-26T18:13:24+00:00

Cops accused of being “constitutionally illiterate” after arresting man over distasteful meme

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-26T15:30:37+00:00

Now the supporters of cancel culture are being cancelled

On Friday, the SWP, one of the largest left-wing organisations in the UK, was taken off Facebook. The party’s own page was removed and so were the pages of dozens of SWP activists. The SWP described FB’s actions as a ‘silencing of political activists’. They’re right. This was a unilateral act of ideological censorship carried out by the capitalist elites of Silicon Valley against a perfectly legal party based in the UK. It demonstrated the terrifying power of the Big Tech oligarchy, which clearly has no respect whatsoever for borders, territory or democratically made national laws and feels that it can reach into any nation state it chooses and switch off the oxygen of publicity to any party, group or individual it disapproves of. The attack on the SWP was indeed a disgrace, and it’s good that the SWP’s FB pages have now been restored.

But there is something spectacularly hollow about the SWP’s complaints. The SWP has played a key role in promoting No Platform policies on campus, which essentially blacklist certain groups and individuals from speaking to students, whether that’s leaders of actual racist organisations, like Nick Griffin, or decent, liberal securalists like Maryam Namazie (perversely branded ‘Islamophobic’).

What’s more, the ideological justifications that the SWP and other leftists have put forward for these acts of censorship – the idea that ‘hateful’ speech must be suppressed, the idea that offensive ideas are wounding, the nasty patrician notion that minority groups need to be protected from difficult discussion by the authorities – have helped to shape the broader, off-campus culture of censorship. Modern ‘hate speech’ laws and police interference in discussions about genderfluidity and other difficult topics, as well as Silicon Valley’s embrace of ever-tighter restrictions on ‘hate speech’ and its No Platforming of right-wing presidents or feminists who say ‘he’ when referring to someone who has a penis – all of this has been influenced by the modern left’s cultivation of a new form of therapeutic, paternalistic censorship that is designed to protect allegedly vulnerable individuals from the hurtful ideologies of right-wingers, critics of Islam, ‘transphobes’, etc etc.

So for the SWP now to complain about being No Platformed is rich indeed. Did these people seriously believe they could nurture a policy of No Platform and that it would only ever be applied to people they dislike? To think in that way shows a grave ignorance of history. It is more than 200 years since the great radical Thomas Paine observed that, ‘He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will one day reach to himself’. SWP, you established a precedent, a precedent of platform removal, and now it has reached you. Why are you shocked? Tom Paine told you this would happen. So did many other warriors for liberty over the centuries.

Or surely our friends in the SWP have read some Trotsky. In 1938, he ridiculed leftists in Mexico who were seeking to ‘curb’ reactionary right-wing voices, ‘either by submitting [them] to censorship or by banning [them] completely’. Any leftist who ‘arms the bourgeois state with special means to control public opinion’ is a fool, said Trotsky. Worse, he is a ‘traitor’. Why? Because he should know that powers used against your enemy might one day be used against you. We should know from ‘historic experience’, he said, that ‘any restriction to democracy in bourgeois society is eventually directed against the proletariat’.

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-26T06:56:03+00:00

The Fifth Great Awakening May Be Nigh

Despite a founding member’s claim that the organizers of Black Lives Matter are “trained Marxists,” the social justice movement has a distinctly religious character. As John McWhorter writes, “Antiracism is now a religion. It is inherent to a religion that one is to accept certain suspensions of disbelief. Certain questions are not to be asked, or if asked, only politely—and the answer one gets, despite being somewhat half-cocked, is to be accepted as doing the job.”

Over the years, as opposition to the Trump administration and support for movements like Black Lives Matter has grown, it has become increasingly clear that social justice is more than just a political phenomenon. This isn’t just because of the fervor of its adherents, nor does it mean that the movement has no secular power. But observant Christians like Andrew Sullivan have noted similarities between the devout of both main factions—Trump supporters and antiracists—and cult followers:

The need for meaning hasn’t gone away, but without Christianity, this yearning looks to politics for satisfaction. And religious impulses, once anchored in and tamed by Christianity, find expression in various political cults. These political manifestations of religion are new and crude, as all new cults have to be. They haven’t been experienced and refined and modeled by millennia of practice and thought. They are evolving in real time. And like almost all new cultish impulses, they demand a total and immediate commitment to save the world.

But, however fervent the support for Trump and despite the events of 6 January, it pales in comparison to the spiritual yearning that suffuses the rhetoric of western leftist social justice movements, as Jonathan Haidt, Douglas Murray, Coleman Hughes, Helen Pluckrose, James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian, Bret Weinstein, Mike Nayna, Sam McGee-Hall and many others have observed. This makes sense. After all, as Sullivan puts it, “We are a meaning-seeking species.”

Rudderless twenty-somethings at elite colleges and under- and unemployed twenty-somethings trapped in their homes during a pandemic with nothing but rage-filled social media to keep them company might well panic when the meaningless of their lives finally hits home. George Floyd’s killing and the subsequent consensus of righteous outrage must have given some of them a rush of purpose.

Of course, some people are sympathetic to social justice ideas and committed to reducing racism, but uncritical or unaware of the movement’s more clerical, fundamentalist aspects. It’s understandable that social justice adherents should focus on the unsatisfactory outcomes that persist despite the huge legislative gains made over the course of the twentieth century in protecting the rights of disenfranchised populations. But the movement lacks self-criticism and promotes totalizing explanations more concerned with examining the soul and character of humanity than proposing meaningful reforms. In this it is unmistakably illiberal. It masks religious zeal as secular politics. We can see this in the pronouncements of people like educational theorist Bettina Love, who wrote in 2020 that “We need therapists who specialize in the healing of teachers and the undoing of Whiteness in education.” Some hear echoes of China’s Cultural Revolution or the Khmer Rouge in proclamations like this one. I hear echoes of Jesus camp, Scientology and even Jim Jones.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-25T21:14:21+00:00

As expected California Gov. Gavin Newsom Lifts Statewide Stay-at-Home Order

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-25T20:09:49+00:00

Spain’s transgender wars are turning nasty

Lidia Falcón O’Neill is a legendary figure in Spanish politics. Half a century ago, she stood up to Franco as head of a cell in the communist Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia. In 1974, this opposition led to her being brutally tortured:

'When she fainted they untied her and laid her on the ground. They woke her up with a bucket of water. … She stayed on the ground, wet, for hours, until they took her down to the cell. … On the sixth day, the torturers could not continue with the same sessions. They could no longer hang her on the wall because she was rapidly losing consciousness because of it. So, when she woke up, she kept getting punched and kicked while lying on the ground.'

Now aged 85, Falcón – who is president of the Feminist Party of Spain (PFE) – is back on the frontline of Spanish politics – and her latest detractors are the transgender mob who tolerate no dissent on the discussion of gender. The PFE are vocal in their opposition to new 'trans laws' in Spain. That has put them at odds with other left-wing parties, and last year they were thrown out of the United Left.

[...]

The Spanish women’s rights group Against the Erasure of Women (CEBM) told me that the government proposes to remove the checks and balances to allow anyone to choose their registered sex, whether or not they are transsexual.

‘In general terms, the aim is to replace the concept of 'sex' by 'gender', which will reinforce sexist stereotypes and jeopardise what has been achieved in terms of equality,’ a representative of the group said.

In Catalonia, the law on male violence has already been reformed. Campaigners say that this change now means that men who identify as women may be able to enter domestic violence shelters for victims. This is a worrying precedent and could put some of the most vulnerable women in society at further risk of harm. Yet in Spain, as in Britain, few are willing to go public against this emerging trans orthodoxy.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-25T19:25:15+00:00

Biden overturns transgender military ban, approves use of gender reassignment surgery for soldiers

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-25T15:54:05+00:00

Slouching Toward Post-Journalism

Led by the New York Times, a few prominent brand names moved to a model that sought to squeeze revenue from digital subscribers lured behind a paywall. This approach carried its own risks. The amount of information in the world was, for practical purposes, infinite. As supply vastly outstripped demand, the news now chased the reader, rather than the other way around. Today, nobody under 85 would look for news in a newspaper. Under such circumstances, what commodity could be offered for sale?

During the 2016 presidential campaign, the Times stumbled onto a possible answer. It entailed a wrenching pivot from a journalism of fact to a “post-journalism” of opinion—a term coined, in his book of that title, by media scholar Andrey Mir. Rather than news, the paper began to sell what was, in effect, a creed, an agenda, to a congregation of like-minded souls. Post-journalism “mixes open ideological intentions with a hidden business necessity required for the media to survive,” Mir observes. The new business model required a new style of reporting. Its language aimed to commodify polarization and threat: journalists had to “scare the audience to make it donate.” At stake was survival in the digital storm.

The experiment proved controversial. It sparked a melodrama over standards at the Times, featuring a conflict between radical young reporters and befuddled middle-aged editors. In a crucible of proclamations, disputes, and meetings, the requirements of the newspaper as an institution collided with the post-journalistic call for an explicit struggle against injustice.

The battleground was the treatment of race and racism in America. But the story began, as it seemingly must, with that inescapable character: Donald Trump.

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-25T13:41:18+00:00

Joe Biden and the Death of Free Speech

In his inaugural address, Biden castigated “a riotous mob [that] thought they could use violence to silence the will of the people.” But politicians invoked that same mob to justify silencing protesters for miles around the inauguration. Biden also declared, “That’s America. The right to dissent peaceably, within the guardrails of our republic. It’s perhaps this nation’s greatest strength.” Yet during Biden’s inauguration, new “guardrails” drove free speech into the dirt.

The Washington Post, a bellwether of the media’s adulation of the new president, had no problem with silencing dissent. Its report on the issue was headlined, “In closing Mall, officials try to strike a balance between the First Amendment and securing Biden’s inauguration.” The “balance” was achieved by suspending the First Amendment on the most important protest day on the American calendar.

The Post noted that only one protest would occur during the Biden inauguration “with about five demonstrators manning a video screen, tucked away near Union Station, along a secure perimeter, surrounded by largely vacant D.C. streets.” Amazingly, the Post portrayed this as proof that the First Amendment had survived: “D.C. and federal officials reached a compromise. They said the plan allows the city’s tradition as the nation’s preeminent stage for protest and free-speech gatherings to continue.”

The federal government dictated so many restrictions on protests that almost all the groups that planned to demonstrate threw in the towel. But that didn’t deter federal officials from taking a victory lap. National Park Service spokesman Mike Litterst declared, “When the government is under assault, that’s especially a time you do not want to appear to be denying civil liberties or denying people their rights under the First Amendment.”

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-24T21:45:01+00:00

University axes ‘three wise monkeys’ from conference promotion due to ‘racial stereotypes’

According to the Daily Mail, the “three wise monkeys” — which represent “see no evil, hear no evil [and] speak no evil” — had been used to advertise a university art history conference, specifically a “call for submissions” for the online event “Sensorial Fixations: Orality, Aurality , Opticality and Hapticity.”

But conference organizers have since apologized for the “oppressive racial stereotype.”

“Upon reflection, we strongly believe that our first poster is not appropriate as its iconology promulgates a long-standing legacy of oppression and exploits racist stereotypes,” the organizers said in a statement. “We bring this to your attention so that we may be held accountable for our actions and in our privileges do and be better.” A university spokesperson added

The Japanese symbol of the three wise monkeys was used to represent a postgraduate conference about the sensory experiences of the body, and it also appeared on a document that asked for submission of research papers to the conference on a range of areas, one of which included papers that represented black, indigenous and people of colour.

It was considered . . . that a monkey, which has been used in a derogatory way in the past, could cause offence in this context, despite this not being the intention of the organisers, so the image was removed.

But the monkeys have their origin in the Tendai school of Buddhism where they’re considered “helpers for divine figures.” Those familiar with Japanese culture say the university is overreacting.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-24T19:56:17+00:00

Democrats level up their censorship demands of Big Tech, call for investigation into Parler

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-24T16:02:46+00:00

The Kitsch of “Wokeness”

Although woke began as an African-American vernacular term meaning conscious of one’s own oppression, the word is now primarily used ironically and pejoratively by those who identify as anti-woke, rather than as something people self-identify as. Woke has become a bad faith term: “the term of the playground, not of serious political analysis.” But I cannot eschew the word altogether. It is useful to have an umbrella term for the declarations about race and gender that are increasingly common among—though not exclusive to—the graduate classes. If wokeness is not ideal, neither are the alternatives. Progressive seems too charitable. Liberal and left-wing seem inaccurate, since many critics of wokeness identify with those traditions and see them as incompatible with it. Virtue signalling can be applied to a whole range of things many would not consider woke—from wearing poppies on Remembrance Sunday to “clapping for our NHS.” It also implies insincerity on the part of the signaller, which may be applicable in some cases but seems too uncharitable in general.

So, until someone suggests a better word, I will use wokeness, if only because it is commonly used, and I think I can recognise it when I see it. Besides, it is not the only word used lazily and insultingly on social media: see centrist, liberal, reactionary, tankie, and so on.

Perhaps one reason why wokeness is so difficult to critique with nuance is because its most frequently encountered manifestations—social media posts with hundreds of thousands of shares—are almost invariably cliched: simplistic stereotypes that lend themselves to easy repetition. Indeed, this might serve as a starting point for a definition of wokeness: conformity with certain cliches seen by their proponents as anti-racist, anti-misogynistic or generally progressive. This admittedly imperfect definition allows that the speaker of woke views may well be sincere, while recognising that her views defer to the maxims held by other members of her class. Certainly, it is preferable to the Cambridge Dictionary definition: “the state of being aware, especially of social problems such as racism and inequality.” This definition, which echoes the original meaning of the word, implies that the woke person has correctly identified what form these societal problems take.

[...]

Of course, cliche has always been integral to the rhetoric of political justice. Indeed, we critics of wokeness have our own kitsch: the liberal arts professor indoctrinating her class; the snowflake student, etc. As Kundera says, kitsch is inescapable. But what is the defining kitsch of wokeness?

Most obviously, it takes the form of slogans: Black Lives Matter, Decolonise the Curriculum, Trans Women Are Women, Believe All Women and—though it has fallen out of fashion somewhat—Check Your Privilege. While such slogans are an easy target, the criticism seems justified by their ubiquity.

Let’s tackle one of the most common: Educate Yourself. One can hardly disagree with the idea that people should read widely and teach themselves things. The problem with the instruction as used by the woke is that it emphasises independent learning, but not independent thought. The activist, without wanting to put in the hard work of teaching themselves, wants others to come to agree with her beliefs. The slogan implies that education should lead to moral and ideological conformity—whereas the opposite is more often true. There is a large body of work on race and identity by politically and ethnically diverse authors out there, but the woke reading lists tend to repeat the same few recommended books by Kendi, Coates and Eddo-Lodge. The reader is to learn from these writers to attack particular systems and supposedly mainstream attitudes—but expresses dissent from the orthodoxy expressed by such authors themselves at her own peril. These books should not be automatically dismissed—we can learn things from stuff we disagree with—but, like anything else, they should be read with an open but critical mind.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-24T04:32:35+00:00

After You Die, Microsoft Wants to Resurrect You as a Chatbot. Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: Alex Jones was right again.

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-23T22:35:27+00:00

Democrats Move to Ban Trump Supporters From Joining the Military and Holding Federal Jobs

While many Trump supporters have been quietly disposed of by their employers, this has largely been a policy of businesses to choose with whom they want to associate with as privately owned companies. However, according to Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL), supporters of Donald Trump should be barred from the public sector as well.

Murphy, who is a member of the House Armed Services Committee, has recently proposed a bill that would prevent members of the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement along with subscribers to ‘QAnon’ from being able to obtain security clearances. Security clearances are a necessity for Americans who wish to join the US Military and also a requirement to obtain a number of federal jobs.

This bill would essentially bar any American that has rallied in support of President Trump post-election or publicly voiced concern about election fraud from being able to hold a job in the Armed Forces or any federal law enforcement agency.

According to an article by the Daily Beast:

The legislation, titled the Security Clearance Improvement Act of 2021, requires applicants looking to obtain or renew their federal security clearances to disclose if they participated in the Jan. 6 rally in Washington—or another “Stop the Steal” event—or if they “knowingly engaged in activities conducted by an organization or movement that spreads conspiracy theories and false information about the U.S. government.

The bill inherently targets Trump supporters and anyone questioning the fraudulent results of the 2020 election or just the government in general. Murphy, a vocal supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, has yet to propose any legislation targeting members of ANTIFA or BLM for their largely unpopular and destructive “Summer of Love” which took the lives of many and resulted in billions of dollars worth of damage.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-23T20:52:25+00:00

President Biden says there’s “nothing we can do” about pandemic trajectory

Republican president: "Thousands are dying every day", "There's blood on his hands!", "Why won't he act?!?", etc

Democrat president: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-23T19:24:06+00:00

[Matt Taibi] The Echo Chamber Era

A day after Joe Biden's inauguration, the headline in Axios read: “Trust in media hits a new low.” Felix Salmon wrote that “for the first time ever, fewer than half of all Americans have trust in traditional media.” The Edelman survey showed overall faith in the press dropping to 46%.

The traditional explanation for this phenomenon is that Republicans hate the press a lot, but Democrats just a little. The Axios story bore this out somewhat, as only 18% of Republicans reported trusting media, versus 57% of Democrats.

Still, 57% of half your potential audience is nothing to brag about, when you’re in the trust business. Other numbers, like 56% of respondents believing journalists are “purposely trying to mislead people,” or 58% thinking that “most news organizations are more concerned with supporting an ideology… than with informing the public" are more ominous.

Media critics who work in the corporate press, like Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post, seem determined to look everywhere but inward for solutions. The dominant legend in our business is that if Republicans believe in fairy tales like Q and “Stop the Steal,” the traditional press can do nothing but stand its ground.

[...]

West Wing was General Hospital for rich white liberals, a seven-season love letter to the enlightened attitudes of the Bobo-in-Paradise demographic. If that’s the self-image of the national press, it’s no wonder they make people want to vomit. The coverage of Biden’s inauguration, another celebration of those attitudes, was an almost perfect mathematical inverse of late-stage Trump reporting, a monument to groveling sycophancy.

John Heileman at MSNBC compared Biden’s speech to Abe Lincoln’s second inaugural, and suggested that the sight of “the Clintons, the Bushes, and the Obamas” gathered for the event was like “the Marvel superheroes all back in one place” (this was not the first post-election Avengers comparison to be heard on cable). Rachel Maddow talked about going through “half a box of Kleenex” as she watched the proceedings. Chris Wallace on Fox said Biden’s lumbering speech was “the best inaugural address I ever heard,” John Kennedy’s “Ask Not” speech included. The joyful tone was set the night before by CNN’s David Challen, who said lights along the Washington Mall were like “extensions of Joe Biden’s arms embracing America.”

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-23T18:56:13+00:00

Cancel culture infects mommy blogging community as women turn on and boycott mother who donated to Trump

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-23T16:40:09+00:00

I regret to inform that the Jesuits are at it again: Loyola asks 'each academic unit' to teach 'identity and privilege'

According to the Loyola University Division of Academic Affairs, the "Racial Justice Examen" is part of a broader plan to create a “safe, respectful, and inclusive environment for students, staff, and faculty of color.” The university will create this environment by reviewing campus procedures and providing diversity training to help students, staff, and faculty “identify and interrupt bias” and learn about “identity and privilege” on campus.

To accomplish this, the university will move in three phases. In summer 2020, the university focused on examining the current diversification and equality efforts in every academic department.

From fall 2020 through fall 2021, the university will have every "academic unit" undergo the "Racial justice examen," asking each to perform a "deep reflection of current practices around race and racial justice."

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-23T08:31:16+00:00

New Christian fundraising platform aims to remedy censorship on other crowdfunding platforms

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-22T21:46:27+00:00

[Rod Dreher] Quotas Are Back

If you think that this means he’s asking managers to make sure racial discrimination is not happening in their agency, you’re mostly wrong. All decent people would want to see racial discrimination eliminated in government agencies — but that’s not what “equity” means. You may not understand that “equity,” in Wokish, is not the same thing as “equality.” As the always-useful Translations From The Wokish glossary explains, in its entry on Equity, equity is the word progressives use to describe equal outcomes. If there are racial imbalances in a system — that is, if a disproportionate number of white people are in its management — then that is taken as proof of “systemic racism.” No other explanation is possible. The glossary adds:

Because of the blank slatism and simplistic ideas of power and identity found within Critical Social Justice worldviews, all imbalances of representation in desirable areas of work are held to be caused by these perceived power dynamics. Equity is the intended remedy to this problem, and it is made applicable only (and especially) to positions of status and influence. For example, there is no equity program that attempts to increase the number of female sanitation workers, though there are equity programs that seek to increase the number of female doctors and politicians, and these endure even in high-status positions that employ more women than men. Of particular concern are positions that have influence where power is concerned, including in terms of shaping the discourses of society.

I could be wrong about this, but I feel confident that the equity assessors will never find a system in which there are not enough white people in management. But let’s say it did happen. I would find it demeaning if I had reason to believe that I had been chosen for a job over a better qualified candidate of color, only because my employer had a quota to fill. I would be ashamed, frankly. The only way I could get over that shame and do my job would to be convince myself that the racial-spoils ideology of progressivism were somehow just. But then I would be a liar.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-22T20:59:24+00:00

The Washington Post Memory-Holed Kamala Harris' Bad Joke About Inmates Begging for Food and Water

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-22T17:36:56+00:00

It’s now a crime to share an offensive meme (archive.today is acting flaky. Will replace with a proper permalink later)

Sergeant Geraint Jones of Devon and Cornwall Police is alleged to have sent a photoshopped image of Floyd’s arrest to coworkers. A member of the WhatsApp group reported the meme to the Independent Office for Police Conduct, and the case was then referred to the Crown Prosecution Service. The CPS has now charged Jones under the 2003 Communications Act, which makes it illegal to send a message of a ‘grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character’. In essence, the Communications Act criminalises offensive jokes sent via direct messages or posted on social media.

The police have been cracking down hard on offensive humour in recent years. Last year, two British teenagers were arrested for posting an image on Snapchat, in which they jokingly re-enacted Floyd’s death. In Scotland, a man was convicted in 2018 of being ‘grossly offensive’ over a joke video in which he taught his pet pug to do a Nazi salute.

We do not know the exact content of Sergeant Jones’s George Floyd meme. It may well have been deeply offensive and distasteful. But putting up with bad jokes and nasty opinions is the price we pay for living in a free society. And we won’t be a free society for much longer if we tolerate the British state’s sinister and authoritarian attacks on humour.

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-22T14:07:46+00:00

French cartoonists are in trouble again

The freedom of a satirical cartoonist to satirise has limits even in France, it appears. The best-known, and best, French daily newspaper, Le Monde, this week bowed to some of its readers — and infuriated others — by apologising for a website cartoon which, it said, “could be interpreted” as an insult to transgender people and a “minimisation” of incest.

As a result, the cartoonist, Xavier Gorce, severed his 19-year relationship with the newspaper. “Freedom is not negotiable,” he tweeted. “I hope that the ‘woke’ culture that is now present in part of the Left-wing Anglo-Saxon press is not spilling over into the media in France.”

Gorce has not been the only person to contrast Le Monde’s near instant apology for his drawing and the newspaper’s passionate support for the moral and legal right of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to publish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed which offended many Muslims.

The incident is complicated. Le Monde did not remove the cartoon from its website and did not fire Mr Gorce. He left on a point of principle. The newspaper insists that its commitment to the freedom of the press and to publishing “challenging” cartoons remain intact. Editor Jérôme Fenoglio said on Wednesday that Le Monde had simply “recognised an error” in publishing a drawing which had upset many of its readers.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-22T05:53:43+00:00

Biden caught maskless just hours after issuing new federal mask mandate

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-22T02:16:47+00:00

University of Iowa struggles to convince court its officials aren’t liable for unconstitutional actions

The University of Iowa allowed a Christian student group that supports same-sex romantic relationships to limit its leadership to students who agree with that stance.

It refused to extend the same leeway to a Christian student group that opposes same-sex romantic relationships, and derecognized it.

The taxpayer-funded institution tried to explain away this disparate treatment, with limited success, during oral argument before the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week.

Represented by religious liberty firm Becket, InterVarsity Graduate Christian Fellowship is trying to hold university officials personally liable for their behavior, which was recognized as unconstitutional by a trial court.

[...]

The state’s lawyer hit a wall with Judge James Loken, however. Good-faith effort or not, “I can’t get around the blatantly discriminatory treatment of InterVarsity versus Love Works, by the same people,” the judge said, referring to the pro-gay Christian student group.

Judge Jonathan Kobes noted he also served on the panel that considered the BLinC appeal, which has yet to issue a ruling. He asked Becket lawyer Daniel Blomberg if the outcome of the first case “arguably dictate[s] the result” of the second.

Even if the panel rules against BLinC, the lawyer responded, InterVarsity should still overcome qualified immunity in the current case, given the “much more express” discrimination it faced.

Judge Rose issued two injunctions against the university, and “no reasonable official can read those injunctions” and conclude they have license to derecognize InterVarsity for its leadership criteria, Blomberg said.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-21T21:18:03+00:00

New rule banning financial services from dropping clients for political reasons is at risk under Biden

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-21T19:07:05+00:00

Describing Jews as ‘Privileged,’ Ethnic Studies Curriculum Sparks Backlash

The latest draft of a state-mandated public school curriculum is generating concerns among Jewish groups, who say California's proposed ethnic studies agenda raises troubling questions about the treatment of Jews compared with other minorities.

The draft curriculum is intended to serve as the foundation for schools to fulfill California's required high school ethnic studies class. It includes a sample lesson on Jews, recommending students discuss how Jews "sometimes have experienced conditional whiteness and privilege." Though the proposed curriculum touches on the experiences of several other ethnic groups, the word privilege is applied to only Jews.

[...]

Prominent Jewish leaders and activists slammed the proposed curriculum, which is open for public comment until Jan. 21. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, called the curriculum a "tragedy," describing it as "woke gone wild with skin color and specific groups installed in a new pecking order."

Others, including Lawfare Project executive director Brooke Goldstein, called it an "embarrassment."

"The Jewish people are the oldest and most persecuted ethnic group in history," Goldstein told the Free Beacon, but "according to this so-called ‘ethnic studies’ curriculum, we are ‘privileged’ while antisemitism and antisemitic themes are celebrated."

Wait wait wait I thought "privilege" was just an acknowledgement of the advantages that someone possesses and not a moral condemnation? Isn't the view that the privilege is just Oppression Olympics explicitly condemned by the wokerati as a right-wing talking point? Are someone's fingers falling off?

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-21T18:27:28+00:00

Biden administration implements "pause" on deporting illegal immigrants for 100 days

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-21T15:50:27+00:00

U.S. Chamber to Joe Biden: You Can Help Americans by Importing Foreign Workers

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says its corporate members can create jobs for Americans if President Joe Biden’s amnesty and migration bill provides them with “the world’s most talented and industrious people.”

The chamber made the January 20 press statement as it applauded Biden’s draft “U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021” that would dramatically accelerate the inflow of foreign workers into Americans’ blue-collar and white-collar jobs. The statement said:

The changes proposed in President Biden’s legislative plan would help many businesses meet their critical workforce needs. Having the world’s most talented and industrious people contribute to our economy drives growth, and in turn, creates jobs for hardworking Americans.

“Nobody believes that,” responded Jessica Vaughan, policy director at the Center for Immigration Studies. The chamber’s companies have shown they want to bring in lower-skilled compliant migrants to take the support jobs created by higher-skilled migrants, even though millions of creative, hard-working, and outspoken Americans are ready to fill both categories of jobs, she said.

The Chamber’s support for Biden’s labor importation bill was explained by Tom Collamore, a former vice president at the chamber. “This is key to stimulating investment of capital [money] that has been sitting on the sidelines, and which would lead to new jobs and economic growth,” Collamore said in a January 19 New York Times article.

“They’re hoarding [the sidelined capital] because they want to invest in [low wage] foreign workers … instead of using it to advance productivity, technology, or wages for American workers,” Vaughan responded. “It is a pretty straightforward admission that what they’re concerned about is their own profits, not the well-being of workers or [technological] modernization.”

“The chamber thinks that Americans who are out of work are not industrious or talented and should be consigned to subsidiary jobs, welfare, and the dole for the rest of their lives,” she added.

In the 2020 election, the U.S. Chamber backed numerous Democratic candidates, largely because the Democrats promised to inflate the labor supply with cheap foreign workers.

“If you have ten people for every job, you’re not gonna have a drive [up] in wages,” Tom Donohue, the CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, explained to Breitbart News in January 2020. “If you have five people for every ten jobs, wages are going to go up,” he complained.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-21T08:34:08+00:00

Germany: 35% of all government positions in Berlin should go to migrants and those with 'foreign roots'

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-21T06:31:22+00:00

The witch-hunting of lockdown sceptics

We have entered a new era of demonology. The hunt is on for heretics and witches who might be held responsible for our current predicament, for the plague of Covid. As in pre-modern times, sinful speakers and thinkers, those who dare to bristle against the political or scientific consensus, are being demonised and publicly shamed as assistants of the plague, as Covid’s willing helpers. They have ‘blood on their hands’, the lockdown fanatics cry, blissfully unaware of how similar they sound to those who in earlier times of disease would drag eccentrics to the stocks in the warped belief that those eccentrics either brought the plague or at least aided its spread.

It is hard to think of any other political constituency in recent times who have been as thoroughly demonised as lockdown sceptics. Climate-change sceptics are up there, of course. Deniers of the cult of genderfluidity have had a severe hammering, too. But that all pales, if not into insignificance then at least into the background, in comparison with the war of barbs and defamation against anyone who questions whether lockdown is the right response to Covid-19.

These people are branded ‘Covid deniers’. They are ‘dangerous’. Their words kill. They have blood on their hands. They have a ‘hell of a lot to answer for’, says chief demonologist Neil O’Brien, Tory MP for Harborough, inflaming the idea that these people and their sinful speech benefit the plague and directly help to cause injury and death.

[...]

The demonisation of lockdown sceptics intensifies daily. They are branded ‘agents of disinformation’ (the Observer) who are ‘dangerous’ (the New Statesman). They are killing people, we are told. The reason Covid-19 is spreading again, and killing large numbers, is ‘because this metropolitan clique of elites put forth falsehoods and misinterpretations’, says one columnist (my italics).

This is, to be frank, unhinged. It is unreasonable in the extreme to blame the spread of Covid on sceptics who have very little influence in public discussion. Virtually the entire political establishment, the vast bulk of the media and every online ‘influencer’ favours lockdown. The message we receive constantly – on TV, online, in the press – is to stay home, be good, don’t kill people. It is a fantasy to believe that the voices of isolated and demonised sceptics are cutting through this conformist fog and inspiring people to recklessly spread the plague.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-21T03:26:37+00:00

TOTAL COINCIDENCE ALERT: C19 Diagnostic Criteria Tightened by WHO on Biden Inauguration Day!

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-20T23:19:49+00:00

Chinese Inventions: The Compass, Gunpowder, …and Critical Social Justice?

Critical East-Asian Theory is already well underway in academia; books and papers abound. From what (little) I have read thereof, this literature uses the same familiar tactics employed with regards to other “identity categories,” and applies them to the Chinese (or more accurately, Han) category to explain the power dynamics of present-day East Asia. These works provide clear and detailed accounts of how Chineseness (or Han-ness) supposedly forms the basis of power in East Asia. However, while I am not a “professional,” my own takeaway based on a passing knowledge of not only Western literature (including “Critical Han Theory”), but also Chinese literature and a more than a decade of “lived experience” on “Chinese” Formosa, is slightly different. In particular, Critical Han Theorists, despite the depth and breadth of information they present, fail to reflect on how those seeking power in China around the turn of the 20th century used exactly the same tactics employed today by Western “Theorists” to obtain it. That is, by positioning themselves as anti-Chinese-supremacists, the actual Chinese supremacists successfully fomented a society-wide obsession with race and ethnicity (zu or minzu, which the Communists typically translate as “Nationality” in English, explained below), which was then used to manufacture demand for complete and total social control by the general public.

In other words, while Western academics are only now looking at China with their Critical lens, I believe China beat them to the punch. China became wholly obsessed with race, ethnicity, and identity politics to a degree not yet realized in the present-day West; although thanks to the Theorists, we are well on the way. I believe that obsession was fomented specifically by the Communist Party, in order to provide a social environment which could be exploited for their own rise to power, and that their continued “forcing” of racial and ethnic identity politics into all aspects of society allows them to maintain their power today. If I am correct, then unless we can rid ourselves of our own unhealthy obsession with identity politics, I don’t see any other outcome than that we will also slip, first gradually and then all at once, into the same sort of racially-conceived authoritarian dystopic nightmare.

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-20T23:19:26+00:00

Chinese Inventions: The Compass, Gunpowder, …and Critical Social Justice?

Critical East-Asian Theory is already well underway in academia; books and papers abound. From what (little) I have read thereof, this literature uses the same familiar tactics employed with regards to other “identity categories,” and applies them to the Chinese (or more accurately, Han) category to explain the power dynamics of present-day East Asia. These works provide clear and detailed accounts of how Chineseness (or Han-ness) supposedly forms the basis of power in East Asia. However, while I am not a “professional,” my own takeaway based on a passing knowledge of not only Western literature (including “Critical Han Theory”), but also Chinese literature and a more than a decade of “lived experience” on “Chinese” Formosa, is slightly different. In particular, Critical Han Theorists, despite the depth and breadth of information they present, fail to reflect on how those seeking power in China around the turn of the 20th century used exactly the same tactics employed today by Western “Theorists” to obtain it. That is, by positioning themselves as anti-Chinese-supremacists, the actual Chinese supremacists successfully fomented a society-wide obsession with race and ethnicity (zu or minzu, which the Communists typically translate as “Nationality” in English, explained below), which was then used to manufacture demand for complete and total social control by the general public.

In other words, while Western academics are only now looking at China with their Critical lens, I believe China beat them to the punch. China became wholly obsessed with race, ethnicity, and identity politics to a degree not yet realized in the present-day West; although thanks to the Theorists, we are well on the way. I believe that obsession was fomented specifically by the Communist Party, in order to provide a social environment which could be exploited for their own rise to power, and that their continued “forcing” of racial and ethnic identity politics into all aspects of society allows them to maintain their power today. If I am correct, then unless we can rid ourselves of our own unhealthy obsession with identity politics, I don’t see any other outcome than that we will also slip, first gradually and then all at once, into the same sort of racially-conceived authoritarian dystopic nightmare.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-20T22:37:07+00:00

Trump discusses creation of new political party with allies

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-20T22:15:46+00:00

Technosolutionism Isn’t the Fix

Technosolutionists were blithely dismissive of such proven measures not only because their advocates were often inconsistent in their advice (don’t wear a mask, wear a mask) but because the recommendations relied on the public (that mass of humanity whom technosolutionists, in the main, view as irrational and misguided) to adhere to them voluntarily. Other traditional methods for controlling the spread of a pandemic—including contact tracing—were criticized for their slow response time and, of course, their reliance on fallible humans rather than efficient technology.

Instead, Apple and Google together created a smartphone app that uses Bluetooth and proximity location to automate contact tracing, thereby removing the role of the individual public health workers who trace such information manually. Lawmakers across the country quickly embraced such approaches, tapping into the vast trove of data created by the digital exhaust our cellphones emit to track outbreak risks. As the Wall Street Journal reported, “The federal government, through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state and local governments have started to receive analyses about the presence and movement of people in certain areas of geographic interest drawn from cellphone data.”8 In one instance in New York City, data researchers noticed that groups of people were gathering in Prospect Park, and alerted local authorities to the fact that citizens were flouting lockdown rules. Critics of the technosolutionist approach point out that contact tracing apps, which were quickly embraced in countries like China and South Korea, were effective only if public health services were also able to successfully test the majority of people at risk, something that has yet to occur in the United States. Furthermore, contract tracing apps require the use of a technology—the smartphone—that only half of US residents over sixty-five (i.e., the segment most vulnerable to COVID-19) even own.

Beyond the practical challenges such apps pose are privacy and surveillance concerns. As researcher Sean McDonald argued in a study of the digital response to COVID-19, “Undeniably, we need to use technology as part of disaster response, but the regulatory immaturity of the industry has made technology companies risky allies, even in the best of circumstances.” McDonald continued that “normalizing government-enforced, digitally delivered controls on our individual and collective rights creates the machinery for redeployment in future contexts, which may or may not be at this scale of emergency.”9

In a time of intense political polarization, technosolutionist approaches can appear to bear a veneer of nonpartisan authority. But the same sort of surveillance used to track the spread of a virus can just as easily track one’s movements during a political protest, for example. That is both the appeal and the danger of technosolutionism, depending on the amount of power one holds. Whether the crisis is one of public health or public safety—riot control or virus control, for example—the response is the same: increased surveillance, especially by the state. As privacy activist Wolfie Christl noted, “The location-data industry was ‘covidwashing’ what are generally privacy-invading products.”10

Powerful technosolutionist fixes during a pandemic can look like South Korea’s contact tracing system, which has been praised by public health experts for its early adoption and its effectiveness in slowing the spread of the pandemic. Yet few mention that South Korea’s success relied on a smaller, more homogenous population than America’s—and for that matter, one that is far more trusting of its government and institutions than we currently are.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-20T21:24:02+00:00

Indigenous Canadian man freezes to death after shelter kicks him out to protect him from COVID

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-20T20:31:09+00:00

Democratic senator wants IRS to investigate conservative student group for holding large event

“According to press reports and social media posts, many participants gathered and mingled indoors without wearing masks, in violation of Palm Beach County’s COVID-19 regulations,” Whitehouse wrote in a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig on Tuesday.

Whitehouse is a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which has oversight of the IRS.

“In holding these ‘superspreader’ events, Turning Point USA knowingly exposed hundreds of young people and staff working at the events to serious risk of infection,” Whitehouse said. He also referenced a fundraising event at Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago Club hosted by Turning Point.

“In light of these actions, the IRS should review whether Turning Point USA should continue to enjoy its tax-exempt nonprofit status,” the Democratic senator.

An article by The College Fix noted that zero coronavirus cases had been reported three weeks after the event. Palm Beach County officials and the convention center that hosted the student activist conference still have not responded to our requests for information on if the event turned out to be a superspreader event.

The letter to the IRS cited no evidence that the event turned into a superspreader event nor that anyone was harmed by the event. It only cites an article saying that the event could lead to a spread of coronavirus infections.

Whitehouse said that the conservative group violated its nonprofit policies by putting “children and others at risk” by allegedly violating coronavirus regulations. The event “was clearly contrary to the public good.”

The letter does not describe how children were put at risk at an event aimed at high school and college student activists, nor at the fundraising event aimed at adults.

I thought they would have Lerner^H^H^H^H^H^H learned something from the last time they tried this nonsense.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-20T18:59:53+00:00

Bernie Sanders mural is defaced in DC in ‘suspected’ hate crime (The "hate crime" is that someone drew a Pepe on it.)

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-20T16:04:04+00:00

[Glenn Greenwald] The New Domestic War on Terror is Coming

The last two weeks have ushered in a wave of new domestic police powers and rhetoric in the name of fighting “terrorism” that are carbon copies of many of the worst excesses of the first War on Terror that began nearly twenty years ago. This trend shows no sign of receding as we move farther from the January 6 Capitol riot. The opposite is true: it is intensifying.

We have witnessed an orgy of censorship from Silicon Valley monopolies with calls for far more aggressive speech policing, a visibly militarized Washington, D.C. featuring a non-ironically named “Green Zone,” vows from the incoming president and his key allies for a new anti-domestic terrorism bill, and frequent accusations of “sedition,” “treason,” and “terrorism” against members of Congress and citizens. This is all driven by a radical expansion of the meaning of “incitement to violence.” It is accompanied by viral-on-social-media pleas that one work with the FBI to turn in one’s fellow citizens (See Something, Say Something!) and demands for a new system of domestic surveillance.

Underlying all of this are immediate insinuations that anyone questioning any of this must, by virtue of these doubts, harbor sympathy for the Terrorists and their neo-Nazi, white supremacist ideology. Liberals have spent so many years now in a tight alliance with neocons and the CIA that they are making the 2002 version of John Ashcroft look like the President of the (old-school) ACLU.

The more honest proponents of this new domestic War on Terror are explicitly admitting that they want to model it on the first one. A New York Times reporter noted on Monday that a “former intelligence official on PBS NewsHour” said “that the US should think about a ‘9/11 Commission’ for domestic extremism and consider applying some of the lessons from the fight against Al Qaeda here at home.” More amazingly, Gen. Stanley McChrystal — for years head of Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq and the commander of the war in Afghanistan — explicitly compared that war to this new one, speaking to Yahoo News:

I did see a similar dynamic in the evolution of al-Qaida in Iraq, where a whole generation of angry Arab youth with very poor prospects followed a powerful leader who promised to take them back in time to a better place, and he led them to embrace an ideology that justified their violence. This is now happening in America….I think we’re much further along in this radicalization process, and facing a much deeper problem as a country, than most Americans realize.”

Anyone who, despite all this, still harbors lingering doubts that the Capitol riot is and will be the neoliberal 9/11, and that a new War on Terror is being implemented in its name, need only watch the two short video clips below, which will clear their doubts for good. It is like being catapulted by an unholy time machine back to Paul Wolfowitz’s 2002 messaging lab.

Hey CWR mods, if they actually do "[apply] some of the lessons from the fight against Al Qaeda here at home" could I please have a Hilux or some other technical once your CIA "assistance" package arrives?

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-20T02:32:17+00:00

Pakistan wants to prosecute online “blasphemy” committed abroad

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-19T23:58:14+00:00

Everything Is Broken

The internet tycoons used the ideology of flatness to hoover up the value from local businesses, national retailers, the whole newspaper industry, etc.—and no one seemed to care. This heist—by which a small group of people, using the wiring of flatness, could transfer to themselves enormous assets without any political, legal or social pushback—enabled progressive activists and their oligarchic funders to pull off a heist of their own, using the same wiring. They seized on the fact that the entire world was already adapting to a life of practical flatness in order to push their ideology of political flatness—what they call social justice, but which has historically meant the transfer of enormous amounts of power and wealth to a select few.

Because this cohort insists on sameness and purity, they have turned the once-independent parts of the American cultural complex into a mutually validating pipeline for conformists with approved viewpoints—who then credential, promote and marry each other. A young Ivy League student gets A’s by parroting intersectional gospel, which in turn means that he is recommended by his professors for an entry-level job at a Washington think tank or publication that is also devoted to these ideas. His ability to widely promote those viewpoints on social media is likely to attract the approval of his next possible boss or the reader of his graduate school application or future mates. His success in clearing those bars will in turn open future opportunities for love and employment. Doing the opposite has an inverse effect, which is nearly impossible to avoid given how tightly this system is now woven. A person who is determined to forgo such worldly enticements—because they are especially smart, or rich, or stubborn—will see only examples of even more talented and accomplished people who have seen their careers crushed and reputations destroyed for daring to stick a toe over the ever multiplying maze of red lines.

So, instead of reflecting the diversity of a large country, these institutions have now been repurposed as instruments to instill and enforce the narrow and rigid agenda of one cohort of people, forbidding exploration or deviation—a regime that has ironically left homeless many, if not most, of the country’s best thinkers and creators. Anyone actually concerned with solving deep-rooted social and economic problems, or God forbid with creating something unique or beautiful—a process that is inevitably messy and often involves exploring heresies and making mistakes—will hit a wall. If they are young and remotely ambitious they will simply snuff out that part of themselves early on, strangling the voice that they know will get them in trouble before they’ve ever had the chance to really hear it sing.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-19T18:49:15+00:00

Biden to roll back Trump's pro-life policies, introduce new pro-abortion legislation

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-19T14:19:33+00:00

Will Cecil Rhodes survive the baying mob?

On 17 January the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities, and Local Government, Robert Jenrick, announced in The Sunday Telegraph that the government intends to “save Britain’s statues from the woke militants who want to censor our past”. The minister did not pull his punches.

[T]here has been an attempt to impose a single, often negative narrative which not so much recalls our national story, as seeks to erase part of it. This has been done at the hand of the flash mob, or by the decree of a ‘cultural committee’ of town hall militants and woke worthies. We live in a country that believes in the rule of law, but when it comes to protecting our heritage, due process has been overridden […] What has stood for generations should be considered thoughtfully, not removed on a whim or at the behest of a baying mob.

“We cannot—and should not—try to edit or censor our past,” Mr Jenrick continued. “At the heart of liberal democracies is a belief that history should be studied, not censored. We should apply the same scorn to the mindless destruction of statues as to the burning of books.” While it has been rumoured for a while that the government was planning on taking such a step, the timing of the Secretary of State’s announcement did not go unremarked in Oxford.

17 January was also the deadline of the latest extension for submissions that Oriel College’s Rhodes Commission had granted itself. The Commission was hastily voted into existence by Oriel’s Governing Body in June 2020, amidst the heat and noise of just the kind of “baying mob” deprecated by the Secretary of State.

[...]

Setting aside the obvious question about the reasonableness of inviting teenagers to contribute to the policy direction of a multi-million-pound charity, is it really likely that the members of the Junior Common Room of Oriel have been unaware of the work of the body that their then-President and her standard-bearers effectively forced into being in June?

If the Commission continues to lack the sort of contributions that it might have expected to receive six months ago, it is because writing a proper and persuasive grown-up letter takes time, effort, and a genuine belief in the righteousness of a cause. Typing a signature at the bottom of an emotive email template sent by a JCR President, and sending it on to the individual Fellows whom one has been instructed particularly to bombard, takes a matter of thoughtless seconds.

As wise dons know, student politics is a fickle business: 40 per cent of an electorate does not represent an overwhelming majority in favour of change, whatever the way in which it may have been spun at the time. Furthermore, since the summer Black Lives Matter has been replaced by the new opportunities for virtue signalling presented on social media by renewed lockdown, Covid-compliance, Brexit, and Donald Trump.

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-19T12:18:04+00:00

The terrifying scourge of ‘multiracial whiteness’

But there’s a small problem. Somehow, on their way to launching a neo-fascist takeover of the United States, the white supremacists ran out of whites. Simply looking at video of the Capitol riot, or looking at the FBI’s wanted images afterwards, makes it obvious that the mob of Trump die-hards were multiracial. The two most famous members of the Proud Boys, America’s premier ‘white nationalist’ group, are an Afro-Cuban and a Samoan. ‘Stop the Steal’ organizer Ali Alexander identifies as black and Arab. And of course, there are November’s famous exit polls, which showed that Joe Biden was carried to the White House by improving on Hillary Clinton’s support with white voters, while faltering with Hispanics and blacks.

Yikes! When you read those facts a few too many times, you start to wonder: what if the white supremacists aren’t white supremacists? What if they’re just a sundry array of people with different political beliefs and a tragic, delusional belief in Donald Trump?

Uh oh. That won’t do. Too much of that and you’re at risk of having an unapproved thought. Too many of those and Amazon shuts off your website.

Fear not, though! The Washington Post is here to explain all the bad think away. Over the weekend, the paper ran a piece by NYU history professor Cristina Beltrán: ‘To understand Trump’s support, we must think in terms of multiracial Whiteness.’

Multiracial…whiteness? Aren’t those antonyms? Not at all, you fool. Beltrán explains: ‘Rooted in America’s ugly history of white supremacy, indigenous dispossession and anti-blackness, multiracial whiteness is an ideology invested in the unequal distribution of land, wealth, power and privilege — a form of hierarchy in which the standing of one section of the population is premised on the debasement of others. Multiracial whiteness reflects an understanding of whiteness as a political color and not simply a racial identity — a discriminatory worldview in which feelings of freedom and belonging are produced through the persecution and dehumanization of others.’\

See? Sloppy reporting has left everyone tragically confused. When the Post calls Trump supporters white, it’s not talking about their actual skin color. It’s just calling them evil. But the path of unrighteousness is open to all. Beltrán warns that those born brown may fall to whiteness by embracing the evil path of…’colorblind individualism’.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-19T00:08:33+00:00

2020: Defund the police!

2021: Fund the secret police!

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-18T22:58:26+00:00

Hundreds of writers and book agents sign joint letter demanding publishing industry bans Trump memoir

The letter, titled "No Book Deals for Traitors,” was signed by more than 250 editors, authors and publishing agents last week.

Together, they oppose any Trump administration official from publishing a future book - including the outgoing president, who is rumoured to be considering a memoir.

Barry Lyga, a novelist who organised the letter, wrote that "As members of the writing and publishing community of the United States, we affirm that participation in the administration of Donald Trump must be considered a uniquely mitigating criterion for publishing houses when considering book deals.”

He continued: “No participant in an administration that caged children, performed involuntary surgeries on captive women, and scoffed at science as millions were infected with a deadly virus should be enriched by the almost rote largesse of a big book deal.”

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-18T20:41:28+00:00

FBI vetting Guard troops in D.C. amid fears of insider attack

U.S. defense officials say they are worried about an insider attack or other threat from service members involved in securing President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, prompting the FBI to vet all of the 25,000 National Guard troops coming into Washington for the event.

The massive undertaking reflects the extraordinary security concerns that have gripped Washington following the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by pro-Trump rioters. And it underscores fears that some of the very people assigned to protect the city over the next several days could present a threat to the incoming president and other VIPs in attendance.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-18T19:16:37+00:00

MeWe is not a free speech platform

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-18T15:20:02+00:00

Education official: Concerns about new social studies standards are ‘white supremacy’

As reported by alphanews.com, Minnesota is in the process of revising those standards to cover “LGBT issues, race, and climate change,” while excising those for “World War I and World War II, the American Revolution, and the Civil War.”

The campaign known as Raise Our Standards sent a letter, signed by over 5,000 individuals, to the state’s Standards Review Committee expressing misgivings over the changes.

For example, the letter requests that benchmarks regarding World War I, World War II and the Holocaust be kept, along with “the rise and effects of communism and socialism, the American Revolution and the Civil War.”

It also questions how the study of racism is framed in the new standards: It’s “political and controversial and comes at the expense of more important topics.”

According to the Center for the American Experiment (of which the Raise Our Standards campaign is part), at a January 11 Standards Review Committee meeting where the revisions were discussed, Director of Academic Standards Doug Paulson praised the committee for “rejecting th[e] white supremacy language” of the Raise Our Standards letter and other correspondence.

Paulson’s peer Danyika Leonard wondered if the committee could just do a “select-all delete sort of thing” for all of the comments in question.

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-18T00:05:05+00:00

Teachers union head demands schools remain closed, but sends her kid to open private school

According to TB Daily News, the Leominster Education Association had voted “no confidence” in Massachusetts Education Commissioner Jeffrey Riley last month after he demanded to know why the Leominster Public Schools (and other districts) remained in all-virtual learning. Leominster was the first in the state to back out of in-person instruction last year, although certain groups (like vocational and special education) did return here and there beginning in late September through November. In an email, then-LEA President Leah Burns wrote that Riley and the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

— have failed to sufficiently consider input from individual districts,

— continue to ignore the ever-growing body of scientific evidence showing the direct correlation between in-person learning and the increased transmission rates of Covid-19 in a community, and

— do not demonstrate the depth of understanding nor the impartial judgement needed to support students, faculty, and families.

“Since our working conditions are the students’ learning conditions, we as educators have a responsibility to ensure that our schools are safe,” Burns said. “Commissioner Riley and the DESE need to listen more carefully and inclusively to health experts and educators from across the state.”

[...]

But a legitimate question is, if in-person instruction truly is as alarming as the union says, why would Burns enroll her child in a private school … which has been open since the beginning of the school year?

[...]

When contacted by The Fix, Burns refused comment except to say she is no longer LEA president. She did not respond when asked if she had resigned.

In addition to the Burns/union situation, following Leominster Superintendent Paula Deacon’s announcement that, due to COVID dangers, the district would remain all-virtual through December, she jetted off to Tampa Bay, Florida to attend the Buccaneers’ final regular season NFL game.

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-17T19:17:19+00:00

Biden to prioritize legal status for millions of immigrants

Biden will announce legislation his first day in office to provide a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants in the United States illegally, according to four people briefed on his plans.

The president-elect campaigned on a path to citizenship for the roughly 11 million people in the U.S. illegally, but it was unclear how quickly he would move while wrestling with the coronavirus pandemic, the economy and other priorities. For advocates, memories were fresh of presidential candidate Barack Obama pledging an immigration bill his first year in office, in 2009, but not tackling the issue until his second term.

Biden's plan is the polar opposite of Donald Trump, whose successful 2016 presidential campaign rested in part on curbing or stopping illegal immigration.

“This really does represent a historic shift from Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda that recognizes that all of the undocumented immigrants that are currently in the United States should be placed on a path to citizenship,” said Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, who was briefed on the bill.

If successful, the legislation would be the biggest move toward granting status to people in the country illegally since President Ronald Reagan bestowed amnesty on nearly 3 million people in 1986. Legislative efforts to overhaul immigration policy failed in 2007 and 2013.

Ron Klain, Biden’s incoming chief of staff, said Saturday that Biden will send an immigration bill to Congress “on his first day in office.” He didn’t elaborate and Biden’s office declined to comment on specifics.

Après Trump, le déluge.

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-17T16:40:04+00:00

Facebook Censors Mexican Cardinal for Denouncing ‘New World Order’

In the nine-and-a-half-minute January 12 video, bearing the title “Plot of a new world order,” the cardinal begins by saying, “Dear friends, this will go on for a long time.”

“This pandemic won’t end in a month or two months, perhaps not this year, perhaps not in three, four, five, six years,” he said. “That’s what these men want. It will be a long haul.”

“It’s a tough, difficult situation, the likes of which has not been seen in human history,” he said:

“Bill Gates is a prophet and foretells the future,” the cardinal noted wryly, “and not only did he predict the coming of the coronavirus, but has also warned of a possible future smallpox pandemic.”

During the pandemic, Cardinal Sandoval has criticized the shuttering of businesses and services as disproportionate measures to curb the spread of the virus.

“What they’re after is a world government, a new world order,” the cardinal asserts in the video.

“They want a single world government, a single army, a single currency, a single economy, and also a single religion — that will certainly not be the Christian religion,” he said. “It will be the religion of Mother Earth, in the name of humanity and universal brotherhood.”

“To this end, pandemics serve to weaken nations; they impoverish and indebt them, bringing down their economies,” Sandoval said. “They also weaken education, closing schools and replacing them with distance learning.”

“These pandemics also impede religious practice, as we saw all last year,” he said. “They close the churches, reduce the number of people who can worship.”

“But above all, they are creating fear, a terrible fear among the people,” he warned.

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-17T05:33:39+00:00

The Look of the Hunted in Today’s US High Schools

Victim. Privilege. Fragility. Lived experience. Systemic. This is just a sampling of the new woke lexicon, into which many Americans are rapidly being catechized. Underlying such supposedly empowering woke-speak is the premise that individuals are powerless in the face of forces beyond their control. Adolescents may claim to be woke to power dynamics, intersectional identities and systemic injustice, but they are asleep to the possibilities of personal agency and human flourishing in community.

As a history teacher at a large, diverse high school in the American South, I am struck by the connections between today’s woke adolescent and Richard Weaver’s “typical modern,” whom he claims in a 1948 book, “has the look of the hunted.” Can this phrase help explain my students’ passivity and anxiety—or their cynicism, anger and growing militancy? Perhaps this cocktail is a combination of what Weaver describes and the victimhood thinking that is now so prevalent.

[...]

In my classroom year after year, I often see the look Weaver described. Meaninglessness and powerlessness frequently merge in discussions about life goals. Many students have only the vague and nebulous goal of going to college, while others hope to make a lot of money. Very few have familial, religious or community aspirations, let alone a personal drive for moral and intellectual development. This is especially evident in the growing difficulty adolescents have in transitioning to adulthood. Teens are offered unending life choices, but have few objective or moral evaluation tools left, and thus struggle to devote themselves to any of these multiplying options. As Ben Sasse notes in The Vanishing American Adult, in our unique historical situation, “a large portion of our people in the prime of their lives are stuck in a sad sort of limbo.” A vibrant life of personal agency and action seems a rarity. Interpersonal initiative atrophies, as people are hidden behind buttons, screens and swipes. This is a perfect recipe for ending up “cribbed, cabined and confined.”

I find this unsurprising, since, for thirteen years of schooling, students are encouraged to nurture career aspirations above all else. But at least the postwar worker of Weaver’s day had the good fortune of rising wages and industrial growth. No such promises can be made today. As Jean Twenge explains in iGen, this leads students to “feel increasingly demoralized about whether they will be able to succeed,” since they are afraid that their lives are “controlled by outside forces.” All of which, she states, contributes to a “slow path to adulthood.”

I’ve seen further evidence of the meaninglessness Weaver references whenever students engage in debates about moral issues. Very few students ground their opinions in universal principles, rationality, natural law or objective truth—looking instead to popular opinion and personal feelings. Of course, this is nothing new. In his 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom quips, “There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.” Bloom’s claim has held true for decades. According to a 2002 Barna report, 83% of teenagers believe moral truth is dependent on circumstances, while only 6% describe it as absolute.

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-16T20:44:09+00:00

[Michael Tracey] Impeachment is more dangerous than Trump

Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, rationalised rushing through Wednesday’s impeachment resolution at spell-binding speed — by far the fastest impeachment process ever — on the grounds that Trump posed a “clear and present danger” to the country, and needed to be removed immediately. “Imminent threats” of various stripes also have a long history of being cited to justify sweeping emergency action, such as the invasion of Iraq. Often upon further inspection, the purported “threat” turns out to have been not so “imminent”, or in fact to have never existed at all.

But as rushed as the impeachment was, if the purported emergency conditions were truly so dire as Pelosi maintained, she could have theoretically summoned the House to convene the day after the mob attack and impeach Trump right away. Congress convened the very next day after the attack on Pearl Harbor to declare war on Japan, for example. Instead, Pelosi waited a full week, and gave everyone the weekend off in the interim. Trump, alleged to be in the process of orchestrating a violent “coup”, was allowed to remain in office unimpeded with access to the nuclear codes for seven days.

Nonetheless, with a total of two hours of perfunctory debate — and no hearings, fact-finding or meditation on the relevant Constitutional Law considerations — Trump was impeached for the second time. As such, the text of the impeachment article will now be permanently embedded in the fabric of American governance.

One wonders who even had a chance to actually sit down and read it. The article, which charges Trump with “incitement of insurrection”, is far-reaching in its potential implications. “Incitement” is an extremely narrowly circumscribed doctrine in US law, and for good reason: anyone who engages in inflammatory but protected political speech could theoretically be said to have engaged in criminally punishable “incitement” without the shield of the First Amendment. If someone who hears your speech chooses on their volition to engage in violent or criminal conduct, you in almost all circumstances cannot be prosecuted.

This new impeachment changes that equilibrium. The one quote cited from Trump in the article to demonstrate his alleged “inciting” speech was: ‘‘If you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.’’ That line — which could have been uttered by Trump in about a thousand different contexts over the past five years — is alleged to have “foreseeably resulted in… lawless action”.

I witnessed countless instances of political speech expressed by activists, journalists, and others during last summer’s protests and riots which under the same standard could have been deemed to have “foreseeably resulted” in “lawless action”, such as attacks on police or destruction of property. But there was always a presumption that the speech was nonetheless protected under the First Amendment. The new “Trump standard” codified by this impeachment could have drastic implications for the the future, should it be applied more widely throughout US jurisprudence. Impeachable “incitement” is also unlikely ever to include statements by a president “encouraging” violence by way of, say, military force.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-16T18:37:25+00:00

Trump's Facebook and Instagram accounts have just been reactivated.

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-16T10:39:29+00:00

We need scepticism more than ever

That free speech, which is the very precondition for democracy, can now be portrayed as a threat to it, shows the increasing extent to which those in control of cultural and political institutions are reluctant to tolerate dissenting opinions. And if free speech is deemed so threatening, it follows that those who practice it are deemed a danger to society, especially now, during the pandemic. This, it seems, is the fate of the contemporary sceptic.

Just look at the way so-called lockdown sceptics are now talked about. They are accused of ‘having blood on their hands’, and of holding ‘deadly beliefs’. They are to be ostracised, censored and humiliated. In this vein, one Guardian columnist even demanded that a specific scientist, who has criticised the lockdown consensus, be denied access to the media to voice his views. And little wonder. Scepticism is now routinely portrayed as dangerous, something to be quashed lest we all suffer.

It is not just criticism of lockdown restrictions that is under fire. Criticism of other aspects of the establishment’s outlook is also treated in much the same way – that is, as dangerous or threatening. Indeed, it is the attempt by our cultural, political and educational elites to demonise criticism that has contributed to the broader demonisation of scepticism itself. Think of the whiff of sulphur that hangs around those called Eurosceptic or climate-sceptical. They are not presented as mere holders of dissenting opinions; they are presented as morally inferior, and potentially dangerous.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-15T21:28:35+00:00

Jack Dorsey says in whistleblower video that Twitter crackdown will be "much bigger" than Trump

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-15T20:40:01+00:00

College president, school superintendent warn about BLM comparisons, racism re: Capitol attack

A college president and a school superintendent recently sent out messages to their respective constituents regarding the U.S. Capitol riot, warning them about systemic racism and not to make comparisons to last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests.

Paul Smith’s College President Jon Strauss said to his “fellow Smitties” that the 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstrations were “largely peaceful protest[s] of the 400 years of subjugation experienced by a large segment of our population.”

[...]

Over in Minnesota, Superintendent Mary Kreger of the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan Public Schools told her teachers and staff that the Washington, DC protests were all about “systemic racism” and “white supremacy.”

“We are progressing through a pandemic, renewing our commitment to equity after George Floyd’s killing, and now we are processing the threat to our democracy that occurred yesterday in our nation’s capital,” Kreger wrote in an email. “We witnessed white supremacy in action. This is not about politics. It is about systemic racism. It is about an affront to our democracy. As educators, we hold our democratic process sacred, close in our hearts and in our minds.”

Kreger added the protests were “even more personal and hurtful for people of color,” and that district social studies teachers and “history buffs” could assist district personnel in “get[ting] the facts straight.”

Can't have any unauthorized Noticing going on now.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-15T19:35:42+00:00

Canadian government to introduce online “hate speech” regulations in early 2021

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-15T17:55:05+00:00

Colorado State dropped $107,000 to identify instances of racism, only to find none

According to the Denver Post, the university paid law firm Husch Blackwell $107,397.50 for more than 304.6 billable hours of services rendered, resulting in an hourly rate of $371.14. The invoice noted that the firm gave CSU a "discount" of percent.

In October, Campus Reform reported that the university hired the investigators to look into issues related to COVID-19 policy compliance and alleged racial bias.

“The investigators found that most student-athletes who participated in the investigation disputed allegations of pervasive racial inequities or harassment within their athletic team or the Athletic Department more broadly,” explained CSU President Joyce McConnell.

“Few individuals alleged that such incidents were widespread or tolerated by current coaching staff," she added.

In spite of the scant evidence for a continued problem with racism, Husch Blackwell recommended that the university “continue or supplement diversity and inclusion training University-wide, with a special focus on the Athletics Department, to advance empathy-building, racial sensitivity and cultural understanding.”

McConnell agreed with the firm’s assessment, announcing that the university “will work quickly to implement the recommendations made in the report and prioritize these issues across the institution as we have committed to do.”

[...]

A Colorado State undergraduate, who wished to remain anonymous, told Campus Reform that the university “is investing more resources on issues that will grab the media’s attention and notoriety rather than using those resources for the needs of the students attending the university.”

The student told Campus Reform that Colorado State sends weekly emails about “positive changes” at the university.

Nevertheless, “students are not pleased with the current administration.”

“Instead of spending $107K on a useless goose chase, how about they repair the windows in Westfall Hall so their students don’t freeze at night, or perhaps the asbestos in Clark C?” she said. “What we want is proper education, not left-wing indoctrination.”

"If there's racism you have to pay for 'diversity training' ^(for ^which ^there ^is ^no ^evidence ^of ^positive ^benefit) but if there's no racism you have to pay us to look harder". A fucking Morton's Fork of grift.

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-15T16:00:59+00:00

Woke Elementary: A Cupertino elementary school forces third-graders to deconstruct their racial identities, then rank themselves according to their “power and privilege.”

Based on whistleblower documents and parents familiar with the session, a third-grade teacher at R.I. Meyerholz Elementary School began the lesson on “social identities” during a math class. The teacher asked all students to create an “identity map,” listing their race, class, gender, religion, family structure, and other characteristics. The teacher explained that the students live in a “dominant culture” of “white, middle class, cisgender, educated, able-bodied, Christian, English speaker[s],” who, according to the lesson, “created and maintained” this culture in order “to hold power and stay in power.”

Next, reading from This Book Is Antiracist, the students learned that “those with privilege have power over others” and that “folx who do not benefit from their social identities, who are in the subordinate culture, have little to no privilege and power.” As an example, the reading states that “a white, cisgender man, who is able-bodied, heterosexual, considered handsome and speaks English has more privilege than a Black transgender woman.” In some cases, because of the principle of intersectionality, “there are parts of us that hold some power and other parts that are oppressed,” even within a single individual.

Following this discussion, the teacher had the students deconstruct their own intersectional identities and “circle the identities that hold power and privilege” on their identity maps, ranking their traits according to the hierarchy. In a related assignment, the students were asked to write short essays describing which aspects of their identities “hold power and privilege” and which do not. The students were expected to produce “at least one full page of writing.” As an example, the presentation included a short paragraph about transgenderism and nonbinary sexuality.

The lesson caused an immediate uproar among Meyerholz Elementary parents. “We were shocked,” said one parent, who agreed to speak with me on condition of anonymity. “They were basically teaching racism to my eight-year-old.” This parent, who is Asian-American, rallied a group of a half dozen families to protest the school’s intersectionality curriculum. The group met with the school principal and demanded an end to the racially divisive instruction. After a tense meeting, the administration agreed to suspend the program. (When reached for comment, Jenn Lashier, the principal of Meyerholz Elementary, said that the training was not part of the “formal curricula, but the process of daily learning facilitated by a certified teacher.”)

The irony is that, despite being 94 percent nonwhite, Meyerholz Elementary is one of the most privileged schools in America. The median household income in Cupertino is $172,000, and nearly 80 percent of residents have a bachelor’s degree or higher. At the school, where the majority of families are Asian-American, the students have exceptionally high rates of academic achievement and the school consistently ranks in the top 1 percent of all elementary schools statewide. In short, nobody at Meyerholz is oppressed, and the school’s high-achieving parents know that teaching intersectionality instead of math is a waste of time—and potentially dangerous. One parent told me that critical race theory was reminiscent of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. “[It divides society between] the oppressor and the oppressed, and since these identities are inborn characteristics people cannot change, the only way to change it is via violent revolution,” the parent said. “Growing up in China, I had learned it many times. The outcome is the family will be ripped apart; husband hates wife, children hate parents. I think it is already happening here.”

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-15T03:53:57+00:00

Prosecutors move to tighten bail restrictions after Kenosha shooter Kyle Rittenhouse, 18, 'flashes White Power signs' while posing for photos in Wisconsin bar - as drinkers 'loudly serenaded' him with Proud Boys anthem. (The "White Power sign" in question being the "Okay" gesture.)

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-15T00:33:51+00:00

A new mutation of the IOTBW meme? ‘No White Guilt’ Signs Causing Big Uproar In Montgomery County Community

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-14T20:55:26+00:00

Liberty University sues Va. Gov. Ralph Northam for 'discrimination'

The university filed a civil action suit in federal court against both Northam as well as Peter Blake, who is the director of the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia, the agency in charge of administering the long-standing Virginia Tuition Assistance Grant program. VTAG is a state program that provides financial aid to Virginia college students attending private nonprofit colleges.

The program awarded tuition grants to 23,000 students for the 2020-21 school year, which is the first year that students enrolled in "online" or "distance learning" programs were ineligible.

The Democrat-controlled General Assembly, along with Northam, implemented changes making incoming Virginia resident students enrolled exclusively in online programs ineligible for the grant. The change does not apply to students who were forced to shift their studies online as an effect of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Liberty University has one of the largest online presences in the country and has been a top recipient of this grant in past years, ranking in the top 1 percent of online schools and universities for academic quality, according to Bestcolleges.com.

The lawsuit noted that Liberty is also one of the largest Christian universities and the second-largest private not-for-profit university in the world, adding that it enrolls over 100,000 students, including more than 25,000 residents of Virginia.

The school filed the lawsuit on the basis that the action by the legislature and the governor violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection clause. The lawsuit asserted that the difference between “online” and “place-based” education is arbitrary because no difference exists between the quality and content of the education received.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-14T19:57:20+00:00

Missouri declared the first “abortion-free” state

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-14T17:47:52+00:00

Who cares about race in Miami? Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio hails from a city where white supremacy barely exists

That Tarrio leads a white supremacist group can be explained not by national race relations, but by the fact that he grew up in Miami: a place where “whiteness”, as it’s defined by the woke media class, simply doesn’t exist – for the simple reason that there are basically no white people here. It’s the only American city where Hispanics completely dominate the political and cultural landscape, and the few white people who remain no longer feel themselves to be “culturally white”. Everything in Miami, including racial dynamics, is filtered through a Hispanic lens, not an American one. Miamians don’t even consider themselves Floridians, because the rest of the state resembles Miami as much as Zimbabwe does. Those who grew up here are unrestrained by traditional ideas of race.

As a Miami cliché, Tarrio isn’t remarkably interesting. He’s merely an opportunist with some street smarts, who, due to his urban look, cuts an imposing figure. What he represents to the media class — and how they frame him — is far more interesting. The conversation about race in America always revolves around the supposed animus between blacks and whites, with other POC automatically siding with African-Americans due to some assumed melanated kinship. The fact that Tarrio is even a member, not to mention the leader, of a white supremacist group is inconceivable to most liberals. Their paradigm, in which all POC are locked in an interminable struggle against their white oppressors, removes all possibility for the fluidity and nuance with which POC, and especially Hispanics, navigate ideas of race and colour.

In Miami, the main animus Hispanics have is with other Hispanics. The Puerto Ricans and the Dominicans have beef with one another. The Chileans and the Argentinians despise each other for reasons beyond just soccer. Hell, my people, the Cubans, have issues not only with other Hispanics, but with each other! The Cubans who immigrated shortly after Castro took power view themselves as entrepreneurial hard workers; they look down on the “newer Cubans” as lazy dope dealers and Medicare fraudsters.

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-14T05:38:06+00:00

First Amendment experts say university officials use COVID as excuse to stifle free speech

For example, he said, his firm recently sued Simpson Central School in Mississippi after its officials forced Lydia Booth, a third-grader, to remove her mask with the words “Jesus Loves Me.”

“They told her that masks with words or logos were not allowed,” Barham said. “But that was not true. The school district allowed other students to wear masks with sports teams and university logos, and even the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter.’ The school was just using its mask mandate to discriminate against Lydia’s religious expression, and that is wrong.”

Barham had warned about such crack downs last summer.

“If the rules are applied even handedly it at least shows the university cares about social distancing,” Barham said in August. “When they play favorites, that’s when, from a legal perspective, social distancing isn’t really the university’s interest and the justification is clearly invalid.”

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-14T03:43:35+00:00

House votes to impeach Trump for second time

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-13T20:33:26+00:00

A quarter of Americans support splitting nation over increasing ideological divides

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-13T20:01:43+00:00

The sinister attempts to silence gender critical academics

The latest glaring example of this came last week. An open letter, signed by over 600 of my colleagues, primarily in academic philosophy, suggested I was personally responsible for ‘transphobic fearmongering’, helping to ‘restrict trans people’s access to life-saving medical treatment’, and serving ‘to encourage the harassment of gender-non-conforming people’. Their pretext was my OBE for services to higher education and academic freedom, awarded in the New Year’s Honours List. Since 2018, I’ve written several pieces criticising the idea that an inner feeling of gender identity should overrule facts about biological sex in nearly all policy contexts. I’ve also written extensively about the fact that many academics agree with me, but are too intimidated to say so. This has made me a particular target for abuse.

It did not matter to those who signed the open letter that there was no evidence for their outrageous defamatory falsehoods; nor that I regularly affirm the right of trans people to live lives free of harassment and discrimination. Never mind as well that as a six-foot tall lesbian, working in a male-dominated academic discipline, I’m fairly gender-non-conforming myself.

The authors of this letter clearly believed they could see into my soul – perhaps even without actually reading my views. Amusingly, the authors of the letter were later forced to add a correction to their claim that I am best known ‘for opposition to the UK Gender Recognition Act’ (In reality, I have no objection to the existence of the Act, and have objected to proposed reforms to it in favour of gender identity).

The spectacle of paid thinkers, whose entire training emphasises the importance of sober argumentation, signing a document which wouldn’t look out of place in the Salem Witch Trial archive, makes one question particularly pertinent: what’s actually going on here?

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-13T19:24:06+00:00

Just build your own ~~forum~~ ~~host~~ ~~registrar~~ ~~payment processor bank~~ insurance company!

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-13T16:48:06+00:00

Coon rebrands as ‘Cheer’ cheese in the wake of racism claims

“We took some time to think about this. We wanted to do the proper due diligence and consulted with different focus groups, and we narrowed it down to three to five names, and resoundingly consumers thought this was the right reflection of what we’re bringing for families.”

Last year the company said it decided to retire the longstanding Coon name as the Black Lives Matter movement made its way around the globe.

“At Saputo, one of our basic principles as an organisation is to treat people with respect and without discrimination, and we will not condone behaviour that goes against this,” the company said in a statement.

While some praised the new name, there was an outpouring of criticism on social media shortly after the news was announced.

One person said: “Absolutely bulls..t. I won’t ever call it that.”

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-13T05:18:33+00:00

Giant Food launches campaign displaying minority-owned business tags on products

Giant Food is launching a new initiative to highlight minority-owned business providers in their stores.

Over 3,000 products in Giant stores will feature updated shelf labels. There are over 218 businesses in Giant’s vendor partnerships.

The labels represent businesses that are Women, Black, Asian-Indian, Hispanic, LGBT, Asian-Pacific, or Veteran owned. The program is part of the store’s efforts to promote diversity.

If the US was actually as racist as they claim it is there's no way they would do this.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-13T04:18:29+00:00

Quebec couple fined $3,000 for wife walking husband on leash after curfew

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-12T23:06:37+00:00

“Everywhere I Went, They Went With Me, Because They Were on My Phone”: Inside the Always Online, All-Consuming World of Twin Flames Universe

According to testimonials in the Facebook group, Twin Flames Universe yielded perks beyond romance. Students shared stories of miraculous transformations. Some made money, found new careers, healed their depression. They did it without visiting Jeff and Shaleia in person. These were miracles that could be accessed from the comfort of your computer chair, or in Katie’s case, a coffee shop. To see results, Katie needed to commit. Some followers went to great ends. They moved cities and countries to be near the twin flames that Jeff and Shaleia affirmed for them. Others spent years waiting to magnetically attract exes.

Still other followers found harder paths to their perfect partners. Some discovered that their twin flame was of a sex they didn’t usually date. Others who identified as male or female announced that that was not really the case. They changed their names and pronouns, bought new wardrobes, and came out to their families and colleagues. They were eager to explore the divine genders that Jeff and Shaleia had confirmed through God.

Long before COVID-19 turned global communications into a giant video chat, Twin Flames Universe was spreading its gospel and building its own world on Facebook, Google Hangouts, and Zoom. Today, followers order meal plans through Jeff and Shaleia’s start-up, Divine Dish; attend Sunday service at their Church of Union; and “resolve trauma” in Mind Alignment Process sessions. Its coaches help recruit new clients via Facebook ads and community outreach.

“Everywhere I went, they went with me, because they were on my phone,” one former member told me. Over time, Katie started spending more time online, in video calls all day. Her Twin Flames friends spanned the globe. They were doctors, business owners, stay-at-home parents, students. Most were single. They shared memes and past traumas in group chats. Twin Flames Universe would eventually include a sales team, a media team, vice presidents, HR. It had flexible hours and like-minded colleagues. And just as at any other ideologically impassioned start-up, Katie, who would eventually become a coach herself, hoped she would be saving the world while making a profit.

Katie now estimates that she spent “around $10,000” on classes, coaching, books, products, and more during her time with the group. “God has sent [this lead] to you for a very specific purpose,” began the spreadsheet where Katie and other coaches kept track of potential clients. “Your one and only job here is to communicate to them that they have finally found what it is they have always been searching for.”

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-12T22:12:57+00:00

FBI issues warning about armed protests in all 50 states before inauguration

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-12T19:28:00+00:00

College pays censored pro-life students $25,000, ditches free speech zones to settle lawsuit

Chemeketa Community College removed blatantly unconstitutional policies 10 years ago to avoid litigation. Inexplicably, it largely reinstated them in 2019.

Several months after a lawsuit was actually filed by pro-life student activists, the Oregon taxpayer-funded institution has removed them again to settle.

Beyond eliminating its tiny so-called free speech zones and requiring students to get permission to use them – two weeks’ notice! – Chemeketa is also paying students Marcos Sanchez and Emma Howell $25,000 to cover attorney’s fees.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents the pro-life activists, announced the settlement Friday. It appears to have been finalized Nov. 10, however, after the Board of Education and top Chemeketa officials – 12 defendants in all – individually signed it over six weeks.

That means the settlement provisions have already taken effect. The college agreed to revise its free speech guidelines, “Release Form for speech activity” and table reservation form.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-12T19:12:50+00:00

Me: I wish there was someone who supported HBD in power.

Monkey's Paw: Say no more.

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-12T18:45:18+00:00

[Glenn Greenwald] How Silicon Valley, in a Show of Monopolistic Force, Destroyed Parler

It was precisely Google’s abuse of its power to control its app device that was at issue “when the European Commission deemed Google LLC as the dominant undertaking in the app stores for the Android mobile operating system (i.e. Google Play Store) and hit the online search and advertisement giant with €4.34 billion for its anti-competitive practices to strengthen its position in various of other markets through its dominance in the app store market.”

The day after a united Apple and Google acted against Parler, Amazon delivered the fatal blow. The company founded and run by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, used virtually identical language as Apple to inform Parler that its web hosting service (AWS) was terminating Parler’s ability to have AWS host its site: “Because Parler cannot comply with our terms of service and poses a very real risk to public safety, we plan to suspend Parler’s account effective Sunday, January 10th, at 11:59PM PST.” Because Amazon is such a dominant force in web hosting, Parler has thus far not found a hosting service for its platform, which is why it has disappeared not only from app stores and phones but also from the internet.

On Thursday, Parler was the most popular app in the United States. By Monday, three of the four Silicon Valley monopolies united to destroy it.

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-12T05:59:24+00:00

[Matt Taibi] We Need a New Media System: If you sell culture war all day, don’t be surprised by the real-world consequences

News companies now clean world events like whalers, using every part of the animal, funneling different facts to different consumers based upon calculations about what will bring back the biggest engagement kick. The Migrant Caravan? Fox slices off comments from a Homeland Security official describing most of the border-crossers as single adults coming for “economic reasons.” The New York Times counters by running a story about how the caravan was deployed as a political issue by a Trump White House staring at poor results in midterm elections.

Repeat this info-sifting process a few billion times and this is how we became, as none other than Mitch McConnell put it last week, a country:

Drifting apart into two separate tribes, with a separate set of facts and separate realities, with nothing in common except our hostility towards each other and mistrust for the few national institutions that we all still share.

The flaw in the system is that even the biggest news companies now operate under the assumption that at least half their potential audience isn’t listening. This leads to all sorts of problems, and the fact that the easiest way to keep your own demographic is to feed it negative stories about others is only the most obvious. On all sides, we now lean into inflammatory caricatures, because the financial incentives encourage it.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-12T00:03:51+00:00

Parler sues Amazon for antitrust violations, requests temporary restraining order

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-11T22:52:58+00:00

Joe Biden’s pork-barrel identity politics

When it comes to government assistance for the post-Covid recovery, Biden has promised that ‘Our priority will be black, Latino, Asian and Native American-owned small businesses, women-owned businesses’. Not necessarily the businesses that are most in need financially, but the businesses whose owners tick the correct identity boxes.

Small businesses have taken a pounding over the past year or so. Lockdowns have been particularly devastating. In the first six months of the pandemic, 60 per cent of the businesses listed on Yelp that were forced to close temporarily due to lockdown have since closed permanently.

Then came the riots in the summer of 2020. The ‘mostly peaceful’ looting, vandalism and arson attacks were the most destructive in US history, causing between $1 billion and $2 billion in property damage, much of it falling on small businesses.

It must be galling, then, for these small business owners to learn that their place in the queue for disaster relief will be shaped by their gender and race – that their prospects for essential assistance could be determined by the place of their identity in the intersectional pecking order.

mo-ming-qi-miao · 2021-01-11T21:00:24+00:00

"Transwomen Are Women" and other Polite Lies

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-11T20:32:35+00:00

Are we killing ourselves with kindness?

Many have termed it “weaponised empathy”, and we now see it everywhere. It’s at the heart of offence-taking, victimhood, buzzwords like “vulnerability”, the aggressive demand to feel “safe”. In 2019, when Piers Morgan publicly refused to accept there were 100 different genders, activist Benjamin Butterworth started a Twitter campaign to get him sacked. His words to Morgan on Good Morning Britain were bitterly ironic: “You don’t need to be a gender expert. You just need to be compassionate.” When people recently complained about the Christmas episode of the Vicar of Dibley being used as a platform for BLM, Dawn French was to tweet ironically, that it was “a lovely calm day, full of humanity” and “compassion”. Increasingly the word is being used to shame or shut down reasonable debate. Label someone lacking in compassion and you no longer have to engage with their motives or reasoning. They are out of the game.

To list the ways in which Pity has corroded national dialogue, to name all the institutions into which it has seeped, would make this article an unreadable checklist of gutted or demoralised estates. There is virtually no institution in the country now which doesn’t seem to have forgotten its first principles – from the British Library, to the Metropolitan Police and even (God help us) to Doctor Who.

In the 1980s, many were scandalised by the monetisation of things which, previously, had seemed not commodities for sale but natural rights. Now, just as effectively, social engineering beats everything and the quota rules. Challenge it at your peril.

The National Trust imposes rainbow lanyards on its workers to promote the gay credentials of one of its properties. Want to question that, or the ubiquity in modern Britain – close to fanatical – of the Rainbow Flag? Then prepare to be accused of bigotry and heartlessness.

The Turner Prize is awarded, in the name of inclusivity, to all four candidates. Feel like pointing out that the award is now castrated; that it no longer has any credibility at all and in future no one has any need to respect or strive for it? Don’t – or find yourself on the wrong side of history.

Make the case that Penguin’s introduction of racial quotas for publishing books is, though doubtless “progressive”, conceivably in conflict with putting literary standards first? Then risk being pasted day after day in the liberal press, get Twitter-stormed and labelled a racist – as author Lionel Shriver discovered to her cost after raising such questions in The Spectator in June 2018. We are killing ourselves with “kindness”.

WickedWitchOfTheWest · 2021-01-11T19:21:35+00:00

Damned If They Do, Damned If They Don’t: Cynicism On Display

Suppose that it had been BLM protestors at the Capitol yesterday, and that authorities had exactly the same level of advance warning that they, rather than a pro-Trump mob, would be there. Would the Capitol Police have reversed course and planned to have the National Guard present? If we accept that they were driven to take a different approach by a desire to avoid the mistakes and criticisms that accompanied the June BLM protests, the reasonable inference is that they would not have done anything differently.

In fact, this is just one of a host of differences between the June and January events which stand as confounding variables to the inference that the different responses were due to race-related differences in the two causes and the two crowds supporting them. To name just a few obvious differences beyond black vs. white, it was reasonable to suppose, in advance of violence breaking out in either case, that BLM protesters are predominantly politically left, anti-Trump, and have a negative view of law-enforcement, while Wednesday’s group was politically right, pro-Trump, and pro law-enforcement. Suppose the fact that conservatives are characteristically more committed to law and order, and to upholding our traditions and institutions, lulled the Capitol Police into a false sense of security. Or suppose the fact that Wednesday’s group was a pro-Trump crowd explains why Trump refused emergency requests to send in the National Guard after violence erupted. Where’s the racism in either of these scenarios?

Of course, many will reject such explanations for the difference in approach. But why? Until more is known, shouldn’t we give the Capitol Police the benefit of the doubt? Shouldn’t we accept people’s explanations for their actions unless we have strong reason to doubt that their explanations are true? Shouldn’t we consider all reasonable explanations before concluding that racism is the real explanation? Not according to CSJT, which teaches people to assume and dogmatically defend race- or other oppressed-class-based explanations while dismissing alternative explanations as oppressive power-plays by those invested in the very systems of oppression that CSJT assumes both to exist, and to be the fundamental realties in which we live and move and have our being.

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