Shawn Mendes says he’s ‘just figuring his sexuality out’ in heartfelt statement
This is a big news story because...
White children playing Monopoly should be taught racial privilege - "Parents of white children should give them more money and allow them to spend less time in jail time when playing Monopoly to teach them about racial privilege, councils have advised. White players could also be given a 'head start on buying property' to convey their racial privilege while nursery rhymes such as Baa Baa Black Sheep should be avoided as they are 'steeped in white culture'. Called 'how to raise anti-racist children' the guidance was drawn up in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests for Barbie manufacturers Mattel and has since been shared by local councils in England. The document, co authored by a BBC education consultant, tells parents it will help them 'raise a new generation of allies with the tools needed to facilitate change'. It suggests talking about the issues when children are playing, adding activities such as 'bike riding, hiking, baking, story reading or playing with figures' were 'all good spaces for discussion'. The guidance says books and dolls which represent Black People are the most effective tools to use in role playing, storytelling and to provoke conversations... The document has been shared as a parenting resource by councils including in Southampton, Leicestershire County Council and in London."
Clearly rigging the game will make it more enjoyable
Lee Fang on X - "Dems can reform w/one easy step: abolish racism. I mean that seriously. Every racial caucus, every gender-segregated club, every id politics institution. There are hundreds of Dem mini-orgs defined by crude stereotypes that need to go. Be a party about ideas, not identity."
i/o on X - "The modern Democratic Party is the only political party in my lifetime that has EXPLICITLY supported and even celebrated policies and programs of OVERT institutional racism against certain groups (e.g., affirmative action, DEI, pay-outs, set-asides)."
Thread by @PaulAnleitner on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "I don't study politics, but I do study culture, and here are some of the signs that a cultural shift has been brewing for years in America that most of the professional political analysts just completely missed. Some of these may seem absurd, but hear me out. 🧵 We'll start with this one:
The Popular Success of Top Gun: Maverick
After the killing of George Floyd and the subsequent protests and rioting in 2020, it seemed to many in the intelligentsia that “culturally relevant” films needed to directly address DEI or systemic race issues to find wide appeal. Top Gun: Maverick instead leaned heavily on classic modernist heroism themes, embodied by a white, male protagonist (Tom Cruise as Maverick) who is a traditional, rule-breaking figure dedicated to honor, duty, and meritocracy. Maverick represented more traditional American values of meritocracy over aristocracy amid what was supposed to be a cultural revolution intended to set up a new inverted aristocracy.
The Mass Cultural Influence of "Anti-Woke" Comedians
While it seems that many of the political talking heads had no idea who Tony Hinchcliffe was until his Puerto Rico joke at Trump's Madison Square Garden rally, Hinchcliffe's show "Kill Tony" is one of the most watched/listened to podcasts in America. His show has sold out Madison Square Garden and other major arenas numerous times, and he is just one of many popular comedians of major cultural influence that completely subverts the traditional "legacy media" routes for fame and influence. Hinchcliffe, Joe Rogan, Theo Von, and others have far more influence with everyday Americans (especially men) than the old comedic vanguard of Saturday Night Live. None of these guys would get along well with Franklin Graham or any of the older cultural bastions of the Republican party, but their total disdain for what became known as "wokism" and complete disregard for any sense of politically correct language appeals to many working-class men.
Major Corporations Making Cuts to DEI Programs
After 2020, major corporations made concerted efforts to increase funding and attention to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs (DEI). By 2024, we began to see corporations making cuts to those same programs. Only one candidate and party was running on being the anti-DEI option. If people were beginning to reject these initiatives, it would make some sense that their views would also be expressed at the ballot box.
Enrollment Surges at K-12 Christian Schools
If you talk to just about anyone who works in a private, Christian school, the post-COVID spike in enrollment has been unprecedented. But it wasn't just that many Christian schools found ways to provide more in-person education during the COVID years, it was that many families who weren't even explicitly professing Christians were looking for educational environments that simply weren't teaching experimental, progressive ideologies on gender and sexuality. It is hard for those in coastal, urban areas to understand how big of an issue has been for most families living in the heartland of America.
The Star Wars Wars
Since Disney's release of its divisive Star Wars: The Last Jedi in 2017, Star Wars has been embroiled in an online culture war. Silly as it may sound to some, Star Wars has become an important myth in our culture and challenges to mythos means challenges to cultural power and influence. One faction of the Star Wars War wanted the storytelling to reflect more progressive, postmodern, and postcolonial values. The most quintessential iteration of this vision for Star Wars was the recent series The Acolyte. The divide between professional reviewers and average fans was emblematic of the cultural divide between the intelligentsia and middle America. The Acolyte was canceled, and all of its merchandise was scrubbed from Disney's online store. It appeared that this particular faction had lost the Star Wars War.
The Metamodern Resurgence of Creed
I talked about this ad nauseam last year when I became the guy who predicted the resurgence of Creed before it happened, so I won't repeat all my talking points here. But you can't understand the metamodern shift unless you get "vibes." Our cultural vibe shifted to Creed, so if you ask yourself which party seems to give the most pro-Creed vibes, it's a pretty easy answer.
Finally- If you can learn to read culture as a student of cultural texts, you won't need political polls. If you find this stuff interesting or helpful, feel free to follow. 🧵over."
iamyesyouareno on X - "“Hey straight white men, pass the power!” Anti-White billboards seen across Britain were tax-funded. Complete absurdity."
Image mirror
Meme - Will Tanner @Will_Tanner_1: "The really troubling and worrisome thing is how widespread and normalized this sort of Radio Rwanda-style rhetoric is"
"Jemele Hill says 'white men' are the 'worst thing in America' "Maybe them being the worse thing in America for decades has its consequences.""
Meme - "WHY ARE PEOPLE USING EXAMPLES FROM FICTION FOR THE "WAR ON WOMEN" *Handmaid's Tale*
WHEN WE HAVE REAL LIFE EXAMPLES? *Women in Burqas*"
Jonatan Pallesen on X - "Perspective from Denmark: In 2024, a vote for Republicans is a vote for what makes the United States uniquely great.
1. Freedom of Speech. The U.S. has freedom of speech from the First Amendment. This strong protection is unusual throughout history and across the world. Even we liberal Danes do not have the same degree of freedom of speech. Many Democrats today are against this right. For example, Tim Waltz has said that there is no freedom of speech for "hate speech" and "misinformation". But freedom of speech is useless if it only applies to speech you agree with. And as we have seen, the terms hate speech and misinformation can be easily bend to include true statements that people find disagreeable. Government-imposed censorship / "moderation" is against fundamental principles of the American project, and today Republicans are the stewards of the First Amendment.
2. Democratic control of immigration. It's true that the U.S. is a nation of immigrants. But it is also true that a nation needs borders. If too many people immigrate too fast from culturally distant places, that will change the country too much, and you risk losing what makes U.S. uniquely great. As it is, the voters have decided what they consider the correct balance. There are democratically decided rules for legal immigration. But there should not on top of this be mass illegal immigration. This is changing the country too fast, against the will of the citizens. Democrats have shown themselves to be far more supportive of / complacent about mass illegal immigration, both in their words and in results.
3. Meritocracy All men are created equal. The focus on individual merit is strong in the U.S., and is one of the things that has made the country great. Today, the policies of Democrats do not treat people as equal. DEI policies explicitly discriminate against White people and Asians. Incredibly, Kamala Harris has suggested campaign policies with descriptions of government transfers specifically to Blacks and Hispanics. While the immediate impact of these policies may not be significant, the principle is very important. It's a fundamentally un-American idea to give rewards based not only on merit, but on race or ethnicity."
wanye on X - "One of the best Adam Carolla rants of all time is the one where he talks about the NRA’s approach to gun regulation by analogy to smoking regulations. First they said the smokers had to have their own section and the smokers said, yeah, that seems reasonable. So they went into their own section. Then they said, no, we’re closing down the smoking section, you’ve gotta go smoke over at the bar. And the smokers said, OK, sure, I guess. And they went over to the bar. Then they said, no, actually, you have to smoke outside. We’ve made a little section for you. And again the smokers acquiesced. Then they came back to the smokers and said, you know, actually, we’re going to need you to move 25 feet down the block. But the NRA just says, “fuck you” to the first request. We’re not gonna argue about the second request, because we’re never going to get to the second request. We’re gonna keep fighting about the first request for all time."
wanye on X - "This is, by the way, why it's extremely important that we keep the Electoral College. It's useful to keep the argument right there, centered right on the same silly debates we've been having since I was a kid, so that radicals aren't given an opportunity to move on to the next thing."
Vivek Ramaswamy on X - "A young Kamala Harris voter in Pennsylvania told me earlier today she can’t get ahead in America because of “systemic racism.” Here’s what I told her: the more you think of yourself as a victim, the more likely you are to become one."
Evil (Political) Scientist on X - "The meme is real: if you listen for a little over a minute you'll hear she doesn't actually understand the simple counterfactual question, "where would you rather live than America?" We shouldn't have to pretend to take these people seriously"
Thread by @Will_Tanner_1 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "What America must solve to restore its greatness is the outright anti-white hatred spewed by the near entirety of the left Below, e.g., a Black Women For Harris leader spews hate that would sound radical coming from Mugabe This Zimbabweification is ubiquitous and must end 🧵👇
In case you think the Mugabe comparison is overblown, below are examples of the sort of thing he said Is that any different than Yale proudly inviting a black psychiatrist on campus to tell students she “had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any White person"? I think not. Nor is it much different than the constant articles published in regime media about how awful white people are. And this sort of hate is far from being solely an American problem; the same is even true in England, the land ostensibly of the English Below, a supposed Conservative, James Cleverly, attacks a British political party for ostensibly being composed of British people...as if it is wrong for Anglo-Saxons to rule the land of Anglo-Saxons Of course, the only reason for such sentiment is hatred of whites. You saw the same thing in Scotland, with its former Prime Minister yelling about how much he hates that governmental positions in Scotland are filled by whites, Scots...in the land named for Scots So, whether it's "conservatives" yelling about the presence of Angles in the government of Angleland or some bizarre, spiteful politician in Scotland screaming about Scots presence in the government of the Scots' Land, the hat the native population for being white
So, our whole lives, we're bombarded with Radio Rwanda-style hatred of the sort shown in the DEI meeting below. Whether it's Australians being lectured on how racist they are for carving civilization out of a barren continent, Americans being lectured constantly by their corporations and schools on why they're the devil himself because of their color, or English protesters being imprisoned for saying that England should be kept English, or South Africans being made the victims of unspeakable crimes the government doesn't even pretend to investigate, the Anglosphere members are bombarded with propaganda that is blatantly hostile to their very existence. And it should be noted that this isn't an exclusively Anglosphere problem, though that's what I tend to focus on. The continent gets its dose of it too. Importantly, the root of it is always the same. It's race communism
Whether farmland confiscation in Zimbabwe or DEI meetings in an American cubicle farm, the motivation is the same. They think "oppressors" (almost always normal white people) should suffer in the physical, spiritual, and economic realms, and that whatever value can be extracted from them should be handed to the "oppressed" (almost always blacks). This is why the Conservative Party feels comfortable denouncing British people for existing in Britain all while collaborating with Labor to turn England into a Paki-filled favela. It's why the Kamala campaign's main message is that white people are evil. It's why towns like Charloi, PA and villages in Germany are being flooded with violent migrants. It's why the anti-white racism of the sort @realJeremyCarl wrote about in "The Unprotected Class" is so common. It's race communism all the way down
But the key to solving all of that is in America. We, for better or worse, are the global hegemon. The British, French, Germans, all those suffering the ravages of race communism, are doing so because that's been the American position for decades... So, to solve the problem, to drive DEI out of businesses, make governments comfortable stopping violent migrants from invading their countries, and generally making national governments positive rather than hostile toward their native populations, the American race communism issue needs to be rooted out by its stems and roots
Doing that will be difficult, but @elonmusk's "Department of Government Efficiency" idea holds some promise. The only reason much of this exists is federal mandates and funding. Universities push it because they're cash-rich enough to do so; slash their funding and end federal student loans so that no one can afford to major in grievance study majors and then go on to push it. Corporate HR and financier ESG push it; slash all in the DOJ unwilling to go after that and investigate the ESG-pushing brokers for not doing their proper fiduciary duty and HR for anti-white, anti-male policies. The data is clear that these ESG companies are discriminating against white job seekers, which is illegal if always unpunished. Used the slimmed down and ideologically in line post-DOGE government to rake them over the coals for itAnd, of course, the big problem is government grants for or tolerance of NGOs that aid and abet the invasion, fund soft on crime prosecutors, back riots and rioters, and otherwise turn America into Zimbabwe. Cut the funding and unleash the state on them. The Open Societies Foundation, BlackRock, the university system, the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation, HIAS and the similar Lutheran + Catholic charities that abet the illegal immigrants, all of them are vectors of DEI and race communism, whether through ESG, affirmative action, or something else. Go after them with a vengeance. All hope isn't lost. As this South African notes, things are far better here than in South Africa or Zimbabwe; those are where race communism was fully carried out rather than only being in its nascent stages. But it is progressing. It is getting worse. We are racing towards Zimbabwe. It must be stopped and can be stopped; doing so will be difficult, but free the West and Anglosphere from the civilization-killer that is race communism"
Authorities work to find the source of racist texts sent to Black people nationwide after the election. Here’s what we know - "Federal and state authorities are working to find the origins of racist text messages sent to Black people across the country referencing slavery and telling them they were “selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation.”"
Satirising left wing hysteria is bad
Frank DeScushin on X - "A study has debunked the narrative that black babies die more with white doctors due to the white doctors' racism. Turns out the black babies the white doctors treated had much lower birth weights. Even when debunking the lie, The Economist says it's understandable people believed it No, that's not understandable. The fact society blindly accepts lies meant to smear Whites as racist without evidence is the problem. It needs to be eradicated, not accepted as part of life."
Jonatan Pallesen on X - "Four years ago, an incendiary study was published claiming that Black babies were more likely to die when cared for by White doctors compared to Black doctors — multiple times more likely even. The finding was always likely to be a statistical artifact, as I and others pointed out on Twitter. But that didn't stop it from being reported widely and uncritically across the news media. In fact, it turned out as we had guessed, that the risk level was different before the doctor care started, and this is where the difference stemmed from. This could be seen with something as simple as looking at the birth weight. (Borjas and Verbruggen, 2024.) So the scientific record has now been corrected. But the woke academia-media milieu has done it's damage nonetheless. Most people will only have seen the news reports of original study. And for many of them, it will continue to be thought of as a scientific fact that affirms woke ideology. It is really quite an incredible claim if you think about it. What would the mechanism be? That White doctors care far less about Black babies, and let them die avoidable deaths? This is a gross worldview. As the Guardian suggests: "Unconscious racism among white doctors towards black women and their babies may also be at play." The study was also used in the Supreme Court, where Ketanji Brown Jackson used it to argue in favor of affirmative action. This is an example of woke academia and news media promoting racial strife and division through fake science. It's important to push back against this."
Noah Smith 🐇 on X - "A viral fake fact that lots of people believed because it suited the fashionable politics of the day, and which people will now realize was always fake because it suits the fashionable politics of the day"
Meme - "When you finally convert to Islam so you can oppress homosexuals and females without fear of being cancelled by liberals"
Muslim Thanos: "A small price to pay for salvation."
Voting Against ‘Wokeness’ Is Not Single-Issue Voting—It’s Every-Issue Voting - "For some voters, a single issue—such as immigration, abortion, or free speech—determines their choice. Increasingly, however, many Americans are also considering their stance on “wokeness”—a term often used to describe the perceived excesses of Critical Social Justice ideology, which encompasses Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, and Postcolonialism—as a potential deciding factor. In 2021, at a rally in Cullman, Alabama, Donald Trump famously quipped that “everything woke turns to shit,” and that it’s “a shortcut to losing everything you have.” Similarly, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has expressed vehement opposition to wokeness—“Woke needs to die”—and has even signed the Stop WOKE Act, which prohibited the teaching of certain activist concepts surrounding race and gender in schools and businesses. Vivek Ramaswamy, a 2024 presidential candidate, centered much of his campaign on opposing wokeness, even authoring a book in 2021 titled Woke, Inc. Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam. Critics often dismiss voters primarily motivated by a disdain for wokeness as narrow-minded or overly engaged in the culture wars. For instance, earlier this week, neuroscientist and noted Trump critic Sam Harris, during a debate with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, labeled these people as “low information voters.” He argued, “[T]here are many people for whom wokeness and far-left identity politics has become a single issue around which they’re going to react.” But is Harris’ characterization of these people as “single issue” voters accurate? The answer is no, because the reality is that wokeness is multifaceted, and voting to oppose it does not equate to a “single issue” stance like voting based solely on abortion access or climate change policy. The adverse impacts of wokeness are neither peripheral nor trivial. Contrary to portrayals by some on the left, wokeness extends beyond mere debates over bathroom access or children’s library books. It poses a profound threat to a wide range of fundamental values cherished by many Americans. This is because wokeness is a totalizing worldview—a lens through which nearly every policy area, from science and medicine to education and social issues, is viewed and scrutinized. Consequently, a voter primarily driven by opposition to wokeness is closer to an “every-issue” voter than a “single-issue” voter. Woke concepts like diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are used to reshape policies at every level. This worldview challenges some of our most fundamental and valued beliefs, such as equality under the law and valuing individual merit over group identity. Instead of honoring individual achievement, “equity” demands that all disparities—whether in the workplace, the classroom, or the justice system—be eliminated to produce equal outcomes. This is routinely accomplished through preferential treatment based on race, sex, and other identities that comprise the intersectional stack. This represents a perfect reversal of Martin Luther King Jr.’s timeless ethical guidance to judge people “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Elevating group identity over the individual not only fuels racial tensions but also undermines both King’s Dream and the American Dream. The negative impact of policies rooted in the woke concept of “equity” is profound and not always immediately obvious. Consider the Minnesota African American Family Preservation and Child Welfare Disproportionality Act, signed into law by Governor Tim Walz, Vice President Harris’ running mate, in response to activists’ complaints about racial disparities in the child-welfare system. How is this statistically equal racial outcome achieved, you ask? By making it more challenging to remove black children from abusive and unsafe environments. Such actions have resulted in a rise in the proportion of black child maltreatment deaths. To echo the thoughts of Thomas Sowell, woke equity appears more focused on sounding good than on being effective. The First Amendment—our fundamental right to free speech—is a primary target of woke ideology... voting against wokeness is not about opposing diversity but about defending open debate and merit-based achievement. The catastrophic impact of Queer Theory on science and medicine cannot be overstated. Queer Theory contends that reality is merely a construct devised by the powerful to sustain their dominance, positioning itself in stark opposition to scientific principles. It insists that all natural categories, even fundamental biological distinctions such as male and female, must be “queered” out of existence to achieve liberation. This ideology has transformed reality into a farcical Monty Python sketch, where men claim to be women and demand to be treated as such in every conceivable context, including sports, prisons, and sex-segregated public spaces. The influence of Queer Theory on medicine has led to the widespread acceptance of pseudoscientific concepts like the “sex spectrum” and an innate “gender identity” or “brain sex” that purportedly can be misaligned with one’s physical body. These views are used to justify interventions like halting the puberty of confused and troubled children, followed by administering sterilizing cross-sex hormones and conducting extreme and irreversible “gender-affirming” surgeries. As a scientist committed to the truth, addressing the spread of this harmful pseudoscience and protecting children from permanent bodily harm is a major concern. Wokeness extends its reach further through Postcolonialism, which reduces all geopolitical events to a binary of oppressor versus oppressed, typically based on perceived colonial status. Nowhere is this more glaring than in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas... wokeness gets more rabid during a Trump presidency for the same reason the possessed girl’s head in The Exorcist started spinning and spewing vomit when the priests began the exorcism process. The woke ideologues possessing our institutions will not relinquish their power voluntarily, and will go absolutely bonkers in the process of losing it. Nevertheless, this should not deter us from initiating the exorcism process. Ultimately, opposing wokeness means upholding fundamental principles cherished by many Americans: equality of opportunity, freedom of speech, scientific integrity, and women’s sex-based rights. To dismiss opposition to wokeness as a “single issue” trivializes the magnitude of the ideological shift at stake and its destructive nature on everything it touches. Voting against wokeness is not single-issue voting—it’s voting to protect nearly every issue that matters."
Meme - memetic_sisyphus @memeticsisyphus: "Her argument is logical. Hierarchy and oppression are bad, children have very little say in their lives therefore they are oppressed, or at the very least the bottom of a hierarchy. The error is not in her conclusion, that children must be free of this oppression, but in her premise: hierarchy is bad. Hierarchy is good, children need guidance. They shouldn’t be in control of their lives, it’s parent’s duty to prepare them for adulthood where they can control their own lives."
madeline lane-mckinley 🍉🍉🍉 @la_louve_rouge_: "Revising, crying, and revising some more."
"Solidarity with Children. An Essay Against Adult Supremacy"
Meme - pagliacci the hated 🌝 @Slatzism: "amazing to think that almost every wider “culture war” issue can be accurately condensed into “people who think it’s okay to smell like shit” vs “people who don’t think it’s okay to smell like shit”"
kyla (he/it) @SoftAn...: "unironically true tho but thats too nuanced/ woke for twitter"
gloop: "Scrolled too far in TikTok search"
"Unpopular opinion: forcing your child to shower is child abvse"
Keywords: forcing your child to shower is child abuse
Meme - Frank DeScushin @FrankDeScushin: "Anti-racism is based on the simplistic thinking that outcome differences mean oppression. It blames Whites and exonerates others of responsibility. It calls for making Whites uncomfortable which anti-racists enjoy. In other words, anti-racism fits Newsweek's definition of a cult."
"How to Deprogram the Cult of Donald Trump I Opinion
He appeals to simplistic, half-baked thinking. Immature thinking that blames others and denies personal responsibility is appealing. It means rules don't apply and you can do as you please. If you lose an election, insist it was stolen and incite an insurrection.
He provides pleasure in being a provocateur. Perpetually putting your thumb in the face of those who don't agree with you is enjoyable. Retaliation feels good. Reconciliation and coming to terms with vexing or enraging issues is hard work. The perpetual provocateur never has to face this."
Chanel Pfahl 🇨🇦 on X - "Imagine you have a 7 year old kid. A sweet, innocent being learning to make sense of the world. You send them to school to get an "education." Instead, their teacher happens to be more interested in creating little minions who echo their own worldview/beliefs. None of their normal colleagues can speak up or they will get fired. The school board encourages the brainwashing just as they’ve been ordered to by the Ministry of Ed. And then there’s you, probably left in the dark while your child’s perspective on the world is warped entirely to reflect that of their teacher’s. Are you paying attention yet? Pictures all from the same grade 3 classroom. (See thread.)"
