Why Do People Tell Me I’m Not Allowed to Write? - "I had professors who encouraged me to not care at all about what anyone would think, not an audience, not family, not friends, to not worry about who I might offend or insult, to just write. I took it to heart, and more than that I respected the artistic and intellectual integrity of the impulse. We all did, and the work coming out of these sessions was really strong. Nothing was off the table... We were method writers, we wrote what we knew, and what we knew was how we felt, and we knew that feeling was universal. Our backgrounds mattered with regard to the characters we wrote and the stories we told in as much as they were personal to us, and infused the stories we were writing with that much more of our own guts. But while these backgrounds were a door that each of us could walk through, and kaleidoscope visualize our pasts, they were not restrictive. They did not prohibit any of us from walking through a different door in our imagination. We could travel anywhere. This glorious 20th century attitude of freedom of expression and individual drive did not make it with me to grad school... when a white playwright’s work was produced, casting directors were assuming that they should cast white actors. We were all aghast... The white writers in the room started adorning the character list pages of our scripts with words to the effect of: Unless otherwise specified, actors can be of any race or ethnicity. That was the thing for a while, but then the more we started to think about it, and to hear back from the community at large, and by “we” I mean basically the entire student body and faculty of all of the grad school drama departments in American universities, which was also “the community,” it turned out that our simple phrase on a character page was insufficient, and even a little bit racist. By saying the characters could be of any racial or ethnic background, we were saying that they weren’t specific to any of them, and if they weren’t specific to any of them, in the era of critical race and gender theory, then we were basically erasing their identities. Not cool, thought we. After that, we made absolutely sure to designate characters with specific racial or ethnic labels in order to force casting directors to cast across racial lines. The idea then became that we needed to give specific thought and consideration to a character’s race and ethnic background before we wrote them—that these identifiers were in fact so essential to every human being that they needed to be set before we created the character so that we didn’t risk writing up someone of a specific identity wrong... Slews of blog posts abounded on my social media feeds decrying white people who wrote badly about characters who were not white as a direct result of their privileged whiteness. It was morally reprehensible, was the idea, it constituted erasure, and white people had been shitty to people of color for long enough. After my experience in childhood of being told not to write because what I was writing was immoral, I was getting the same message as an adult. There were things I should not write about because it was immoral. In the community, this morphed from the idea that white people were incapable of accurately writing black and other racial and ethnic minorities so don’t even try, into a situation where a writer who was steeped in any kind of perceived privilege should not write a character who is perceived by the metric of the hierarchy of oppression to be less privileged than them. Meaning that a cis-white-het female writer would find it extraordinarily difficult to create a character who was a trans black queer female, because she just didn’t have the bandwidth to bridge the gap between the two identities. Writing what you know became don’t write about identities that don’t match your own unless you seek insight and take direction from someone who identifies as that identity. A whole new profession sprung up overnight: sensitivity readers. I saw a post from a person who does this as a side hustle. She had read a writer’s play and had some critiques from the perspective of critical race and gender theory. She is a talented writer, and I was interested in her view, but what really struck me was her note that race is more than just skin deep. I thought about this, and something about it didn’t ring true. If race is something that is meaningful in deeper ways than skin tone, okay, but what are those things, how are they defined, how are they quantified? How is a writer supposed to include all the features of a character that define them as belonging to a particular racial group without creating a character that is just a conglomeration of biased stereotypes about their race? So that’s how we got to where we are now. The American indie and academic theater has come to the conclusion that it is racist for a white writer to only write plays about white people and racist for a white writer to write plays with racial and/or ethnically diverse characters."
Jessie Tu and the Fashionably Regressive Approach to Reading - "Any person who produces art or literature, or who offers up anything at all for public consumption, must have a thick skin. Harsh reviews are as much a part of the writing life as days in front of a blank screen. But Jessie Tu’s recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald about Irish novelist Sally Rooney strikes a nastier tone than most scathing book reviews manage. It is symptomatic of an increasingly prevalent trend in literature, according to which the identity of the writer is more important than the words on the page. If your reaction is to scoff and retort that this is exactly what happened when white men dominated publishing, well okay. But that injustice is simply being re-rehearsed in reverse—this time, the wolf preens in progressive sheep’s clothing, masquerading as virtuous while advocating a heavily regressive approach to reading... Repeatedly and repetitively, she chastises Rooney and her milky-skinned characters and their milky lives (she’s even irritated by the amount of tea they drink). The word “white” appears 14 times in Tu's 950-word article (15, if we include the obligatory reference to “whiteness”), and in almost every instance it’s dripping with scorn. Sally Rooney is indeed white, and to date, has written about a country in which the population is approximately 93 percent white. But so what? If Rooney is to be discouraged from writing about white people in rural and urban Ireland, then she is almost certainly being discouraged from writing about anything at all. Does anyone doubt that a thoroughgoing identitarian like Tu would hesitate to raise a pitchfork were Sally Rooney to write a novel about four Taiwanese friends strolling around Taipei? Tu gripes that Rooney might not be well regarded were she not white, and concludes by stating that anyone who believes she is being too hard on Rooney is probably white too. Unaware of her arrogant presumption as she hammers bitterly at her keyboard, she awards herself the job of speaking on behalf of all people of colour, who she appears to assume couldn’t possibly formulate an opinion at odds with her own. The world of literature has expanded its horizons in recent decades, and the quality of writing from voices that may not have been published in decades past is something for which we should be grateful. Zadie Smith, Marlon James, and Colson Whitehead are among countless voices I would likely not have had the opportunity to enjoy in the 1970s or ‘80s. But with this welcome change has come a sort of piggybacking identity politico, armed with the axioms of critical theory and bucketloads of self-righteous indignation, who determines the value of work based on the immutable characteristics of its author. Shouldn’t the writing be what counts? And if not, do we leave it to zealots like Tu to determine the hierarchy of literary value? Tu places Rooney squarely beneath herself, because although Rooney scores a handful of intersectional points for being female, she loses so many more on account of her dreadful whiteness. Is Tu’s work more essential because she is the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants in Australia? If Rooney were writing about being the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants in Australia, then perhaps. But she isn’t, she’s writing about what she knows. Does Tu’s training as a classical violinist count against her in some way as it indicates privilege, or does she judge her work to be more worthy than that of Sally Rooney on the basis of skin colour alone? The answer of course is that none of this should matter—not violin training, not gender, not race. Just the words. Tu once absurdly declared that she would “probably never read another novel by a straight white male”—that pale, stale monolith of colonialism and misogyny. Tu’s stance is shared by one of Ireland’s best-selling novelists, Marian Keyes. Novels by men, she announced, aren’t worth reading because “their lives are so limited … such a small and narrow experience.” British journalist Suzanne Moore was delighted to hear this. The problem with this kind of thinking is that precision is not encouraged. It is stupefying to consider the extent to which a mind must be captured by ideology to actually believe these ideas. Keyes may read Tu’s latest novel, and feel positively virtuous for having done so, but Tu is unlikely to read hers, since both women choose their reading material for reasons that have nothing to do with literary merit. Ostensibly progressive ideals are cancelling one another out, and soon fanatics will have nothing left to read but writers of their own gender and skin colour. Promoting a recent novel, Keyes recommended a reading list that she hoped would help to “burn down the patriarchy.” Notwithstanding her conviction that it is male minds that are too limited, small, and narrow, her own 12 recommended authors were all white Western women. And what does all this identity-obsessing do for authors? Not much. Zadie Smith has described it as a “pain in the arse.” In the Irish Times, Sally Rooney’s contemporary, Naoise Dolan, tried to make sense of identity and the pervasive interest in her personal life and sexual orientation. She pointed out that Sara Collins “has argued that as a black writer, she is wary of any externally imposed pressure to stick to certain subjects just because of her identity.” These writers—and all writers—are more than their immutable characteristics. The stories they tell are what matters, and the search for truth... Whether the ideologues like it or not, some of the greatest works of literature in the world’s canon have been written by supposedly dreadful people of seemingly huge privilege and opportunity"
Ironically, we keep being told that literature builds empathy, but modern literature is the exact opposite
In Battle With Trump, Harvard Leaders See Bad Outcomes Ahead - The New York Times - "behind the scenes, several senior officials at Harvard and on its top governing board believe that the university is confronting a crisis that could last until President Trump is out of power, according to three people involved in the discussions. Even if Harvard’s legal case is successful, these officials say, the school will still face enormous troubles that may force the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university to rethink its identity and scale... Lawrence H. Summers, a former Harvard president, said in an interview that it was difficult to judge any potential settlement before its terms became public. But, he said, “It would be a tragedy if Harvard resolved this in a way that gave support and encouragement to the idea of extralegal extortion.”"
If you have to follow the rules, that's extralegal extortion, because accepting federal funding only means you need to follow the rules and the law when it pushes the left wing agenda
Trump Administration Escalates Harvard Feud With New Justice Dept. Investigation - The New York Times - "The Trump administration is investigating whether Harvard’s admissions policies comply with a Supreme Court ruling that ended affirmative action, opening a new front in its widening effort to bring the institution to heel. In a letter on Monday, the Justice Department notified Harvard about an investigation into whether its admissions process had been used to defraud the government... Editors’ Picks Help! A Cruise Line Charged Us $800 for a Day Trip We Didn’t Take. How to Make Leftovers Feel Like a Feast A Mayoral Campaign Captures a Cool Crowd Harvard has basked in acclaim from White House critics for fighting back so far. After Mr. Trump threatened the school’s federal funding, Harvard sued the administration, and legal experts said the university has a strong case. But behind closed doors, several senior officials at Harvard and on its top governing board have acknowledged they are in an untenable crisis. Even if Harvard quickly wins in court, they have determined, the school will still face wide-ranging funding problems and continuing investigations by the administration. Some university officials even fear that the range of civil investigations could turn into full-blown criminal inquiries."
Ignoring the Supreme Court is only bad if it hurts the left wing agenda
EXCLUSIVE: Minneapolis ‘nonbinary’ leftist educator arrested on child sex crime charges after citizen sting - "A radical nonbinary leftist educator has been arrested on child sex crime charges in Minneapolis. Preston Palmer, 35, an anti-police activist, was booked into Hennepin County Jail on Wednesday without bail. He has been charged with pornographic work involving minors, according to records. Palmer, a third-grade substitute teacher at Sullivan STEAM school in Minneapolis, was busted during an undercover child sex sting conducted by citizen "child predator hunter" Alex Rosen. Palmer arrived at Brackett Park with the intention to meet a 13-year-old boy for sex, along with his father, according to Rosen, who claimed Palmer came with a flash drive that included more than 4,000 child pornographic images. Palmer arranged the encounter with the person he believed was a minor boy, corresponding with him via text messages... the leftist educator allegedly claimed that he was sexually attracted to kids ages 5 and up, and admitted to grooming underage boys because it sexually excites him... Palmer has a history of radical leftist social media posts seeking the abolishment of law enforcement. In 2020, Palmer pressured Minneapolis Public Schools to cut ties with Minneapolis Police in order to "protect" children, claiming the MPD was a "white supremacist terrorist organization." He has a similar ideology to Antifa, according to his social media. Palmer has also expressed severe hatred of journalist Andy Ngo, senior editor of The Post Millennial."
Steve McGuire on X - "Lauren Noble, the director of the Buckley Institute at Yale, was falsely accused of using a racial slur. The police refused to check the security cameras, she was charged, and dragged through the courts for a year. As she writes: “The interest in my case seemed to have more to do with what the Buckley Institute represents than anything I ever did, or was accused of doing.” “Headlines in local newspapers made much of both Buckley and conservatism generally, as left-leaning media outlets welcomed the opportunity to advance the dishonest narrative that everyone on the right is racist.” “They made the malicious assumption that those who defend free speech do so to say offensive things.” Eventually the charges were dropped: “When the state finally obtained the video footage I had asked the police to view before arresting me — footage that had been accessible all along — it showed me, on multiple dates, calmly parking, getting out of my car and walking away.” Insane."
DogeDesigner on X - "Millions in South Africa could benefit from Starlink, but it’s not allowed just because Elon Musk isn’t black. They may not allow Starlink to operate, but they can’t stop people of their country from seeking the truth. 𝕏 is the #1 News App on the AppStore in South Africa! 🥇"
Kekius Maximus on X - "There are 140 laws on the books in South Africa that are explicitly racist against anyone who is not black. This is a terrible disgrace to the legacy of the great Nelson Mandela. End racism in South Africa now!"
Thousands of chickens euthanized in South Africa after they were left starving and eating each other - "Animal welfare officers faced the grisly task of euthanizing more than 350,000 chickens by hand after they were left starving and cannibalizing each other when a South African state-owned poultry company ran out of money to feed them"
Lulu Solomon on X - "Daybreak farms is owned 100% by the PIC which is owned by the South African govt & reports to the finance minister (although operates independently). They recently have been unable to pay workers or feed the animals forcing the chickens into cannibalism"
Damn colonisation and apartheid! The solution is more Black Economic Empowerment
Wanjiru Njoya on X - "The Bantus steal farms from the Boers then neglect the farm animals. SPCA found carcasses of more than 50 pigs and other animals on this farm. Plus scores of other dead animals, including chickens, geese and sheep. Around 162 animals were euthanized due to their poor condition."
Thread by @WanjiruNjoya on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "The Bantus who are persecuting the Boers are not even indigenous to South Africa. They're from the Congo. They migrated eastwards and southwards, genociding smaller tribes as they swept their way to the south. Finally they encountered Boers, and attempted to wipe them out too. The only reason the Boers survived is because they fought to survive. And now the Bantus are trying once more to wipe them out, encouraged by their friends in the liberal media. If the Bantus want Boers to go "back" to Europe, they should do the same and go "back" to the Congo."
Since all black people are the same, the fact that the Boers have been living there longer than the Zulus is irrelevant since black people were there first
Pieter Kriel on X - "Every white South African is racist. We were built by apartheid, by design. You don’t “grow out” of that. You unlearn it, painfully. Having Black friends doesn’t fix it. #southafricapolitics #politicalcommentary #politicalanalysis"
Bennett's Phylactery on X - "If you're waiting for things to get bad enough for people to come to their senses, consider that this kid wakes up every morning in South Africa"
Eric Kaufmann on X - "There is no woke right even if the MAGA or online right resembles the woke left on some dimensions. Why? Woke refers to a very specific phenomenon: the making sacred of historically marginalized race, gender and sexual groups. This informs a moralistic worldview that judges people's core character. A reverse wokeism would require making whites, men and straight people sacred. Words which inadvertently insult these totems would be grounds for cancellation. Straight white men would be viewed as more spiritual and moral than others. Nonwhite LGBT women would be viewed as the fallen. People who praised Indian cuisine or Chinese philosophy might be accused of a backhanded slight against whites, and get piled on. Any disparity, such as boys doing worse than girls in school, would be evidence of systemic discrimination. These would be part of a moral crusade, and those who blaspheme the sacred would be seen as morally deficient, with a stained soul. Disgusting like a sex offender. People you want to debank, unfriend and cast out of all of society. In-group policing within a tribe is not the same as enforcing a moral order which seeks to take over the entire society. Judging someone to be a bad Republican is not the same as saying they are a bad person you wouldn't date, hire or live next door to. They may be cast out of the right-wing tribe but not of society. The first is tribal, the second moralistic. The woke left is moralistic, the MAGA or online right is not. Fans of a weak football (soccer) team like Bolton Wanderers who say the Premier League is rigged against them are tribal, identitarian and express grievance politics. They have a power-centred ‘oppressor-oppressed’ worldview. They are emotional and may feel virtue due to not being dominant. They may castigate those who do not share a victim narrative. That doesn't make them woke football fans. The idea of face validity in science refers to the fact that terms have a meaning in the real world that scholars agree on and can thus recognize, measure and test when they see it. Woke has a clear meaning which is inevitably associated with the cultural left. Woke refers to the making sacred of historically marginalized race, gender and sexual groups. In theory, whites and men (less likely) could become historically marginalized after awhile. The left might then feel sorry enough for them to make them sacred. For example, Muslims in India were once the elite but are now subaltern enough to count as oppressed. Jews once got sympathy but are now seen as part of the oppressor class. Things could change. But then that would likely put the right on the side of the nonwhite female oppressor class so there would still be no woke right. By definition there can be no woke right."
Bill Maher: Democrats Went from 'Men Can Have Babies' to 'We Like the Terrorists' - "Maher pointed out that the Democrats have gone from promoting progressive causes to pushing extremist, radical, hateful ideals popular on college campuses of late. And he said catering to these extreme ideals popular with some young people is an outrage... He also criticized Vermont’s socialist Senator Bernie Sanders and New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for allowing the Palestinian flag to be flown during their recent speaking tour... All of this, Maher said, will eventually come home to roost and Democrats will pay a heavy price for leaning into this extremism."
New Poll Shows Just How Unpatriotic Young Democrats Have Become - "A recent Harvard poll revealed a stark divide in national pride among young Americans, with only 24% of young Democrats expressing pride in being American compared to a striking 76% of young Republicans who share that sentiment... Among Democrat respondents, 54% said they are embarrassed to be Americans while 21% said they are neither. For Republicans, it was 8% and 16% respectively... When asked about values central to American identity, 35% of respondents across party lines selected “individual rights and freedoms” as the most important. However, sharp partisan differences emerged beyond this shared priority. Young Democrats identified “diversity and inclusion” — 28% — and “democracy and civic participation” — 22% — as central to American identity, whereas young Republicans focused on “economic opportunity and upward mobility” — 27% — and “Christian values” — 21%. The poll also revealed concerning trends in community engagement, with only 17% of the young Americans polled reporting a sense of strong connection to a community. Less than half said they felt any sense of community."
New Rule: Retake the Flag! | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) - YouTube - "You're embarrassed to be an American? Well, guess what? The feeling's mutual. Because you have no perspective. Is America perfect? No, of course not. No country is. Although, don't get Tucker Carlson started on Russia... the US is leagues ahead of the rest of the world on most of the progressive issues that are important to young people. America has 14 million women-owned businesses. Seventeen percent of Black women are starting businesses, which is faster than White women or White men. Gay Americans are free to marry, and 49 percent of them own property. Yes, in America, gays buy buildings. In other places, they get thrown off them. You know all those old movies you think are cringe? Well, they're cringe because America changed, because we modernized, way more than most societies have. Our current Congress is the most racially and ethnically diverse ever. They're like a beautiful, useless rainbow... And we proudly live in a land where every TV commercial features a mixed race couple, including the ones where it makes no sense... Mom's Black, dad's White, and the kid's Asian... But here is the dilemma for Democrats. Their young people, their key constituency, not only don't like their own civilization, they like the wrong one. They actually think Hamas is a liberation movement. They chant for the Houthis. They're chanting, "We will honor our martyrs at Yale." They're looking for love in all the wrong countries. Someone needs to tell the kids that America is not the society where women basically have no rights, where there's zero freedom of religion, and where dissent is punishable by death... at Coachella this year, when an Irish rap group projected onto screens, "Fuck Israel, Free Palestine," got big applause. "Globalize the Intifada" is the catchphrase that's really catching on these days, as if worldwide suicide bombing and cosplaying Islamic revolutionaries is the answer to our problems. At an AOC-Bernie Sanders rally in Idaho last month, someone threw a Palestinian flag over an American flag, and the crowd erupted in approval. What should have happened after that is one of the adults on stage should have told their young loyal followers, "This is not a symbol of freedom." "This is." *American flag*"
We are still told that left wingers don't hate their countries. Of course, the cope will be that that's because they love their country so much, they want to hold it accountable. But selectively holding someone to impossibly high standards, slamming him for not meeting them and then celebrating someone much worse is also known as double standards, or discrimination
National Identity Awareness on X - "🚨 BREAKING UPDATE: ⚫️ who brutally beat a White kid at the local playground bloody walks away with a brand new bike. Not a charge. Not a suspension. Not even a slap on the wrist. Just a shiny reward, like violence earns prizes now so long as the victim's White. This isn’t justice. It’s inversion. And every time it happens, the message gets louder: attack the right skin color, and you’ll be celebrated. If the roles were reversed, if two White kids had beaten a ⚫️ bloody they’d be in juvenile detention before nightfall. No excuses with national media outrage. Yet when the victim is White, justice turns its back. And worst of all? Many White Americans cheer it on. They've been trained like dogs to hate themselves, to celebrate their own degradation. That’s not virtue. That’s mental illness. This isn't just hypocrisy. It's a sickness infecting our society, and it needs to be called out, dragged into the light, and ruthlessly shamed until it withers!"
Sean Fitzgerald (Actual Justice Warrior) on X - "Wait, black kids & teens attack a white boy. While he's walking his dog, they throw rocks, sucker punch him, attack him while he's on the ground, and split his head open. Then white guy gives the black attacker a free bike to fight racism? This is top-tier white guilt"
Lachlan Phillips exo/acc 👾 on X - "I briefly lived with two girls who were high profile (genuine) refugees from Saudi Arabia. They were sheltered by a friend of mine. They left Islam, and had a bounty on their heads. At the time I wasn't to tell anyone they were there or use their real names because they committed apostasy (left Islam) and it was believed that people were actively trying to find them *in Australia* to exact Sharia law upon them. (Apostasy carries the death penalty in Saudi Arabia) They were tracked on an app called Absher that prevents women from independently travelling without a man, as per Islamic law, so they had to literally escape under subterfuge. If you go deep enough into compassionate leftism, inevitably you come out the other side into classical liberalism, fighting fiercely for women's rights and for western values against what's essentially the largest scale industrial subjugation of women in human history. The left's tacit countenance of Islamism is one of the great moral failings of our time. Sharia has no place in the West, and yes, this is the moral, correct and compassionate position."
Meme - Chanel Pfahl 🇨🇦 @ChanLPfa: "“White allies” are not welcome to join this “safe and confidential” “affinity space” taking place at the Ontario Modern Language Teachers’ Association conference this Fri/Sat in Toronto. If you “identify as White,” you can “continue [your] journey as an ally in another space.” This is what racism looks like."
An "ally" is someone who is still despised for existing because of immutable characteristics
Why free speech in Cambridge could be under threat - "Speakers and academics whose comments have actively contributed to making certain students feel unsafe or unwelcome have often been defended on the grounds of free speech, including ‘race-realist’ philosophy fellow Nathan Cofnas or ‘gender critical’ speaker Helen Joyce, who spoke at Caius last year, attracting significant backlash. Similar concerns have been raised in relation to the University’s new free speech code, which was adopted following last year’s Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. Caius Master Professor Pippa Rogerson previously told Varsity that she was “terribly worried” about the code’s encouragement of controversial or challenging speech and how this may conflict with duties to prevent discrimination under equalities legislation. Several academics have blamed the law for the University’s inability to properly sanction Cofnas."
If there is one thing that will destroy a university, it is controversial or challenging speech
Of course, calling for the death of Jews is free speech and must be protected
