Links - 16th September 2026 (General Wokeness [including Shiloh Hendrix])

Clown World ™ 🤡 on X - "Shiloh Hendrix was convicted today of disorderly conduct in Minnesota after a video of her yelling the N word at an 8 year old went viral last year The jury actually acquitted her on the count tied to the child. She was convicted only for how she spoke to the grown man who filmed her Her sentence: a stayed 90 day jail term, a year of probation, 200 hours of community service, and a 1,000 dollar fine Meanwhile illegals who commit actual violent crimes against children get treated as victims the moment ICE shows up. Explain the logic there"
Plus the black guy kept telling her to

say it, so shouldn't he be jailed for commissioning a crime?

𝐌𝐑. 𝐖𝐇𝐈𝐓𝐄 ™ on X - "Free speech has been executed in Minnesota. 💀💀💀 Jury convicts Hendrix for the n-word. Just a word…not violence. Disorderly conduct for speech kills the First Amendment. Woke jury delivered the kill shot. SCOTUS must incinerate this. Hendrix did nothing criminal. Prosecutors and jury criminaliz

ed language."
How ignorant. Don't they know that freedom of speech is only for antifa to shoot police officers and left wing "protesters" to burn down cities?!

Meme - "Minnesota... Disorderly Conduct and Not Disorderly Conduct. Insane."
*Shiloh Hendrix* *Black Lives Matter riots with burning buildings*

CannCon on X - "Use the N-word in Minnesota - 4 day trial, 9 hour deliberation, and 1 guilty verdict out of 2 counts. But a Somali immigrant rapes an underage foster care runaway though in the same state? "Dismissed in the interest of justice" -despite the girls glasses found in their car, a sexual trauma evaluation at the hospital, and her towel found at their house. The two cases are directly linked. The latter is the "victim" in the former, by the way. So in Minnesota, you can rape a minor and have your cased dismissed and then get called the N-word and have that person convicted. All while fundraising $340,000 thanks to the help of the NAACP and others."

Matt Walsh on X - "So wait a second. We were told that Shiloh Hendrix had berated a child. That was allegedly the reason the Somali guy started filming and hassling her. But the jury acquitted her of disorderly conduct against the child and convicted her of disorderly conduct against the guy with the camera. Which means she actually didn't say anything to the kid. She was being harassed by the guy with the camera for no reason. And now she's been convicted of a crime simply for telling the guy to leave her alone. This is total madness."

Rhett Thompson | Facebook - "Let's take a walk through the "American justice system," shall we? Sharmake Omar is the Somali man who filmed Shiloh Hendrix on the playground in Minnesota that day in April 2025. In January 2022, he and another Somali man "allegedly" spent two days raping an underage foster care runaway in a trailer, keeping her falsely imprisoned. In March 2025, all charges were dismissed "in the interest of justice." Weeks later, in April 2025, he turned his camera phone on at the playground after a young Somali thief attempted to steal from a White mom, Shiloh Hendrix, and began haranguing that White mom for having said the word "******." Omar demanded that Hendrix repeat the word on camera, which she did - four times, while Omar himself said the word five times in the less-than-one-minute video. Four long months later, multiple "disorderly conduct" charges were maliciously brought against Shiloh Hendrix for the playground incident in which she was the only victim, and Sharmake Omar was the videographer. Then, last night, Shiloh Hendrix was CONVICTED - specifically for saying "******" to Sharmake Omar AFTER he demanded she say it, while he himself said it repeatedly. Her sentence is a $1,000 fine and 200 hours of community service. By the way, Sharmake Omar WAS NEVER CALLED TO TESTIFY in the Hendrix trial. But don't worry, that's not all the justice we have in store for today. Just keep the substance of Shiloh's "crime" - as well as her sentence - in mind as we move forward. Rewind to April 2020. That's when Sharmake Omar, our favorite Somali videographer, along with another Somali friend of his (separate from his alleged co-raper), committed a violent assault in the street. Omar threw a rock at a car, then attacked and beat the 16-year-old driver. A bystander tried to intervene, but Omar's accomplice threatened him with a knife. For this, Sharmake Omar was charged merely with DISORDERLY CONDUCT. Yes, for hurling a deadly weapon at a vehicle, then beating the teenage driver while his criminal pal held off onlookers at knifepoint, Omar faced the EXACT SAME CHARGE that Shiloh Hendrix faced for saying a word that Omar asked her to say, as she held her child in her arms and fled the playground before Omar could assault her, too. Like Shiloh Hendrix, Sharmake Omar was convicted on his count of disorderly conduct. His sentence? A $200 fine. That's it. That's the entire thing. So, to review: Rape an underage foster child for two days (allegedly)? Clean slate. Hurl a deadly weapon at a car and assault its driver? $200. Say a word to an accused rapist/kidnapper and convicted violent criminal who demands you say it while saying it himself? $1,000 and 200 hours - not to mention international infamy. Could the anti-White standard be any more egregiously in our faces? Seriously, everyone involved in prosecuting the Shiloh Hendrix case is unspeakably evil.
This includes, but is not limited to:
~ Rochester City Attorney Michael Spindler-Krage
~ Lead prosecutor Nicholas Shabel
~ Judge Christa Daily, who ensured Shiloh's conviction
~ The Rochester NAACP
~ Rochester's "Community Engagement Response Team"
~ Rochester Mayor Kim Norton
~ Rochester City Council President Randy Schubring
~ Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison
~ Minnesota's Council on American-Islamic Relations
~ Sharmake Omar, without whom none of this would have happened
~ The young Somali thief's non-English speaking parents
~ Innumerable members of the local Somali scam network
~ Six jurors - two men and four women (reportedly all White) - who unanimously agreed that White people are not protected under the US Constitution
While we're here, a special dishonorable mention must go to every single "FIRST AMENDMENT" organization in this hollowed-out country of ours. You know the ones - they relentlessly solicit and collect large sums of money to "DEFEND FREE SPEECH" while continuously, cravenly shrinking away from EVERY meaningful case where White people - LITERALLY THE ONLY GROUP WITH MAJORITY SUPPORT FOR THE FIRST AMENDMENT - are so clearly maliciously persecuted. Similarly, NOT ONE official at any level of government has spoken up to defend Shiloh Hendrix or her Constitutional rights, nor to condemn the flagrantly anti-White, utterly unconstitutional witch hunt she's endured. Not one. And on that note, we conclude today's review of the good ol' "American justice system." Lady Justice isn't blind. She's anti-White. And it's never been plainer to see."

Seethroughitall on X - "It is outrageous that a White mother can be stolen from, baited, and recorded, then end up as the defendant because she uttered a forbidden word It is outrageous that the word itself carries the power to invert right and wrong It is outrageous that a secular legal system has adopted the logic of blasphemy - sacred class, designated offenders, special penalties - along racial lines. It is outrageous that an entire population is expected to live in constant fear of offending Black people, while no such fear exists in reverse for offenses against Whites This precedent has to be broken. No racial group is sacred. No population gets to demand permanent deference under threat of institutional punishment. The special force of the word must be removed so that this fear of “blasphemy” no longer affects daily life and legal outcomes, especially in White founded and settled countries"

Visegrad24 | Facebook - "🇺🇸 A mural honoring Iryna Zarutska, the 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who was fatally stabbed by repeat offender Decarlos Brown Jr. aboard a Charlotte light rail train in August 2025, has been removed from a building in Chicago's North Center neighborhood and replaced with an abstract artwork by Chicago artist Rubén Aguirre. Zarutska's portrait was part of the nationwide "Remember Iryna" campaign, funded in part by Elon Musk and tech CEO Eoghan McCabe. The mural was repeatedly vandalized, including graffiti reading "Hang Musk" in January and multiple incidents of paint being thrown over the artwork in February and March."

Taya Bass on X - "Christopher Hitchens: ”In 1786, when the United States was barely a country, it was having its sailors taken as slaves by the Barbary states, the states of the Ottoman Empire and North Africa. Tripoli, shores of Tripoli. Ships stopped, its crews carried off into slavery. We estimate 1.5 million European and American slaves taken between 1750 and 1815. Jefferson and Adams went to their ambassador in London and said, why do you do this to us? The United States has never had a quarrel with the Muslim world of any kind. We weren't in the crusades. We weren't at war with Spain. Why do you do this to our people and our ships? Why do you plunder and enslave our people? The ambassador said very plainly, Mr. Abdul Rahman said, because the Quran gives us permission to do so, because you are infidels, and that's our answer. Jefferson said, well, in that case, I will send a navy which will crush your state, which he did. Islamic fundamentalism is not created by American democracy. It's a lie to say so. It's a masochistic lie, and it excuses those who are the real criminals, and blames us for the attacks made upon us.”"

Ketanji Brown Jackson Essence Magazine cover draws SCOTUS criticism - "Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson appeared on the cover of the most recent issue of Essence magazine, spurring critics to argue that she is seeking publicity in ways that are inappropriate for a member of the Supreme Court. "Supreme Court Justices are not celebrities and should not be treated like celebrities," Andrew Fleischman, a Georgia trial and appeal lawyer, wrote of the cover. The magazine’s cover features a picture of Jackson wearing a purple coat and smiling directly at the reader. Underneath Jackson’s photo is a caption that reads "the people’s champion." Essence magazine describes itself as the "premiere lifestyle, fashion and beauty magazine for African-American women." "As America celebrates its 250th birthday, ESSENCE is honored to unveil the first magazine cover of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s historic career," Essence tweeted on the 4th of July, accompanied by a photo of the cover. "As the first Black woman to serve on the nation’s highest court, there is no better moment to celebrate her extraordinary legacy. Ketanji Brown Jackson represents the American Dream and serves as a powerful voice for those simply seeking the God-given birthrights promised to every American," the tweet continued. Jackson’s public appearances outside the court have drawn periodic criticism from some conservatives and legal observers, who argue that events such as the Grammy Awards, Broadway appearances and a Vogue photoshoot risk blurring the line between judicial service and celebrity. "Ketanji Brown Jackson isn't supposed to be ‘the people's champion,’" Billy Binion, a reporter for a libertarian magazine, wrote on X. "She's not a politician. She's supposed to interpret the law, not make it. This kind of thing is why so many people misunderstand how our government works at a basic level." "Supreme Court justices shouldn’t be celebrities," Laura Powell, a civil liberties attorney, wrote of the cover. "They don’t have to run for office and don’t need political slogans like ‘The People’s Champion.’ They should simply do their job of interpreting the law according to constitutional principles."... Michelle Zier, an adjunct professor at Concordia University Chicago, pointed out that Alexander Hamilton explicitly warned that the judges would need to avoid the temptation to be seen as champions of the people. "But it is easy to see that it would require an uncommon portion of fortitude in the judges to do their duty as faithful guardians of the Constitution, where legislative invasions of it had been instigated by the major voice of the community," Hamilton wrote in Federalist 78. Even some on the left took issue with Jackson’s magazine cover. "Obviously, nowhere near the worst or weirdest thing is sitting justice has done but yeah we really need that SCOTUS code of ethics," Sam Weinberg, who runs a progressive advocacy group, wrote of the cover. Responding to criticism over her attendance at the Grammy Awards, Jackson argued that part of her job is "public outreach and education.""
Left wingers see the job of judges (and indeed everyone else) as pushing the left wing agenda

Linda Sarsour declares it’s ‘time to replace the Declaration of Independence’

Millions say they won’t celebrate July 4 as poll reveals deep national pessimism - "A Reuters/Ipsos poll reveals that one in five Americans will not mark Independence Day this year, including a quarter of Democrats and 8% of Republicans... This sentiment is palpable across the country. Betsy Halsey, a 63-year-old retired teacher from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, who still keeps memorabilia from America's 1976 bicentennial, finds herself unable to celebrate... Beverly Gage, a Yale University historian, observes, "The very idea of celebrating has become political and partisan." She adds, "What is striking about our moment is how widespread the pessimism seems to be."... Historians point out that previous milestone anniversaries also occurred during tumultuous periods, such as the aftermath of the Civil War in 1876 and the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal in 1976. Yale's Gage cautions against judging the present too harshly, stating, "One thing I'm very aware of is how poor people are at judging their own historical moment.""
We are still told that left wingers do not hate their countries

Daily Mail on X - "Jameela Jamil says 'British people are the most evil people in history' as she admonishes her fellow compatriots in anti-colonial podcast tirade"
Piers Morgan on X - "Excellent.. then obviously, Ms Jamil will no longer wish to grace us with her graceless presence."
"Minorities" need to be protected from the racism of white countries, so they should all be deported

Meme - Ryan Sanchez: "Never ask an "anti-colonialist" the race of her boyfriend" *Jameela Jamil with white guy*
Breitbart News @BreitbartNews: "Jameela Jamil: "British people are truly the most evil people in history. They are Thanos. Britain is Thanes. They owe 43 trillion to India.""
To be fair, to some extent this is because only white guys can put up with all the woke bullshit

Dave Portnoy on X - "🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨 Congrats to USA Today’s Nancy Armour! She has written the dumbest paragraph not only of my lifetime but in the history of sports. This is an article that says @CaitlinClark22 arguing calls has become dangerous for the @wnba and civil rights. Nancy Armour should be out in a straight jacket and locked up. We can’t have these types of smooth brains roaming freely in society"

'Misinformation' is the elite's favourite weapon against common sense Britain - " Have you heard? Biology is misinformation now. Refer to someone with a penis as a man and you might find yourself branded a peddler of falsehoods. A report commissioned by the Government Office for Science lists “anti-trans” views as a species of misinfo. Given that the witch-like slur of “anti-trans” has been attached even to people who say that if you have a todger you’re a fella, this basically means scientific truth itself is now viewed as a demonic belief that must be caged and curtailed. A report commissioned by the Government Office for Science lists “anti-trans” views as a species of misinfo. Given that the witch-like slur of “anti-trans” has been attached even to people who say that if you have a todger you’re a fella, this basically means scientific truth itself is now viewed as a demonic belief that must be caged and curtailed. It’s bad enough when a pink-haired, genderfluid activist on TikTok rebrands science as fake news. But to see such anti-science drivel in a report commissioned by the Government Office for Science is truly wild. The report is staggeringly Orwellian. It’s the handiwork of seven academics who were tasked by the Government with devising some best practice for “identifying and tackling harmful misinformation”. What they’ve actually come up with is a sweeping programme of mind-policing that would have even Big Brother thinking: “Guys, chill.” The report focuses on 11 key categories of “misleading information”. One of the categories is “anti-LGBTQ+ narratives”, which includes dangerous chatter about “gender ideology”. Apparently it’s “harmful” to use the term “gender ideology” to describe trans ideas. I use that phrase all the time. Maybe I should turn myself in to the jumped-up Joe McCarthys of wokeness. “Pride misrepresentation” is another example of “misleading information”. But who decides what counts as “Pride misrepresentation”? If I say it’s a shame Pride has gone from being a celebration of gay liberation to a parade featuring half-naked gyrating blokes and men dressed as dogs, is that “misrepresentation”? Photographic evidence would suggest otherwise. Even more alarmingly, “transgender athlete controversies” are highlighted as fertile territory for misinfo. One of the examples provided is that of Imane Khelif. That’s the Algerian Olympic boxer who enraged the reality-based community during Paris 2024 after being allowed to fight in the women’s category despite reportedly failing sex tests a year earlier. Women like JK Rowling were horrified that Khelif was allowed to pound women despite no proof of being biologically female. Might Rowling have a placard hung round her neck calling her a “Misinformer”? Will the very idea of women’s rights – which is all the Khelif sceptics were standing up for – be tarred as dangerous fabulism? The moral inversion is mind-blowing. The only misinformation in “transgender athlete controversies” is when biological males claim to be women and then nick gold medals from actual women. It takes doublethink to dizzying new heights to call truth-telling women hawkers of misinformation, and then to nod along as some bloke in a leotard says: “I’m a lady.” This report confirms how sinister the term “misinformation” has become. My sceptic antennae go into overdrive whenever I hear that word, because I know I’m about to witness an act of censorship dolled up as a valiant strike for truth. Indeed, the report also lists “institutional delegitimisation” of the EU as an example of “misleading” information. As a proud Brexiteer, I confess to being devoted to “delegitimising” the EU, which I consider to be an undemocratic oligarchy that throttles the sovereign rights of the peoples of Europe. That’s not “misinformation” – it’s an entirely legitimate opinion shared by millions. Mass immigration is likewise ring-fenced from “misinformation”. It is harmful, apparently, to “[associate] minority communities with crime or cultural threat”. But it isn’t “misinformation” to point out that men from Afghanistan are overrepresented in the offending rates for sexual assault. Or that Pakistani men are more likely to be suspects in the crime of group-based child sexual exploitation – what some call “grooming gangs”. Demonising free, frank debate about the consequences of “diversity” has nothing to do with tackling misinformation. It’s about gagging ordinary people who are simply worried for their daughters and their nation. The report proposes a programme of “psychological inoculation” in schools. Kids must be taught to develop “psychological resistance against future manipulation”, it says. Reading that sent a chill down my spine. It’s pure 1984 – the inculcation of kids with what the intellectual elite considers to be correct-think, but which looks to the rest of us like bunkum and ideology."
"Misinformation" is anything that threatens the left wing agenda

New Islamic centre gets $325K lift from NDP - "“This is about helping a growing community access a larger space,” Simard, the MLA for Brandon East, told the Sun. “We know the current facility is too small, and this investment supports not just religious practice, but a place to gather, learn and build community.” The centre is in the process of acquiring about 3.55 acres at the southeast corner of First Street and Patricia Avenue in the Rural Municipality of Cornwallis at a cost of $325,000. Last month, during a community Iftar hosted by the centre and attended by Premier Wab Kinew, Deputy Premier Uzoma Asagwara and Simard, among others, BIC explained the need for the expanded facility and sought provincial support."
Time to abolish churches to prevent theocracy

France's 'patriotic' banquets rile hard left - "Three-and-a-half-thousand hungry Alsatians wolf down platters of charcuterie and periodically burst into noisy chorus. No, it is not the police dogs' annual convention, but the latest iteration of a feasting phenomenon that is sweeping provincial France. The Alsace town of Colmar – famous for its half-timbered medieval centre – was the scene last weekend of one of the banquets géants – huge banquets whose popularity in the country has suddenly become a hot political issue. Run by a company called Le Canon Français (The French Cannon), the banquets are massively attended – €81 (£70) buying you four courses of local gastronomy, all the wine you can drink, and several hours of sing-along camaraderie. But not everyone is cheering. For the radical left party La France Insoumise (LFI - France Unbowed), the banquets have a dark side. LFI says it has evidence of racist chanting, and of immigrant staff being insulted. With pork regularly on the menu, they say the feasts are purposely designed to exclude Muslims and vegetarians. And they point to the financial involvement of an ultra-conservative entrepreneur called Pierre-Edouard Stérin as evidence of a masked ulterior motivation - to promote the agenda of the hard right... At the Colmar banquet, held in a vast hangar-like space on the edge of town, such accusations are dismissed as out of hand. In a festive atmosphere, the punters are seated on long tables with 50 down each side. Many men are in what has become a kind of Canon Français uniform of berets and braces. A few women are in traditional Alsace dress. There is a brief address from management reminding diners of the "charter" committing them to behave with respect and decorum, and then the fun begins. An army of servers brings out platters with choucroute, then Alsace cheeses and the traditional kougelhopf pudding. Wine flows. Periodically the revellers down forks and join in song. Old standards by performers like Michel Delpech and Joe Dassin are the favourites. These are songs from an earlier generation, but the participants - who look like they are mainly in their 20s and 30s - know them by heart. "We come for four things: atmosphere, friends, alcohol and food," says one young man in a response which is echoed over and again. No-one wants to talk politics, except to say that they think the whole controversy has been blown out of proportion... The crowd in Colmar was predominantly – but not exclusively – white, and many said they were happy to be able to celebrate in a traditional way among friends. But the BBC saw no behaviour and heard no language that could be construed as offensive... De Boisse says they are merely reviving an old French tradition of dining en masse with good local fare that goes back into the depths of medieval history. After the French Revolution, which led to the abolition of the monarchy, there were banquets républicains - marking the arrival of the new system - and, until recently, every village used to have its annual banquet populaire - a kind of people's feast. "Nowadays people waste so much of their time alone, in their homes, on social media. They've lost the habit of being together and talking. What gives us the most pleasure is when we see the lawyer sitting next to the baker, chatting away," says de Boisse... For the LFI's Fourreau, the banquets are "backward-looking – a caricature". "They don't represent modern France, which is a place rich in its diversity." Her party is trying to get local authorities to stop the banquets, and has had an initial success in the Brittany town of Quimper... De Boisse does not deny that many – maybe most – of his punters are probably from the right, or hard right. "But look at the elections. That is how more and more people in the countryside are voting," he says. "Look, I create jobs, I create happiness for the people who come to the banquets. OK, these politicians don't like the shareholder, they don't like the people who come to the banquets, they don't like my name – but why do they have to go on the attack? "Why can't they just leave us alone?""
Left wingers hate it when people enjoy things

Simu Liu

"Simu Liu shared a link.
Not the best way to wake up ... LOL 3.5 AND they pronounced my name wrong! On a serious note, I think this is a very teachable moment. I've had people question me my entire life. A lot of teachers thought I'd never amount to anything, a lot of producers, directors, writers AND costars have questioned my acting ability, and I've been rejected from countless conservatories, grants, programs, etc. I've been second-guessed at every single possible step of my career. The reason why I'm still standing is because I'm singularly focused, I have the utmost belief in my abilities and I refuse to let the opinions of others define me. In your careers, in your lives, no matter where you go, you will always encounter voices of doubt. Some will come from people who are frighteningly close to you. Are you going to let those voices own you? Define you? Keep you from achieving what you want? That isn't to say you can't have bad days, and that you shouldn't use your support systems and talk about how you feel like I'm doing right now. I've never been called ugly so many times in my entire life! For me, it's never been about trying to shut the voices out - it's a fruitless effort (especially if people happen to be making Youtube videos about it lol). Rather, it's about learning to let the voices exist and be OKAY with it. I'm still doing my thing, and I'm still over the moon happy I get this amazing opportunity. I'm not going a few voices of doubt ruin that for me, and neither should you, in whatever you are pursuing in your life. Bet on yourself. Own your greatness. Take that spotlight. BTW I sincerely hope this Youtube channel will attack topics with a bit more journalistic and creative integrity in the future ... there are a lot of real and valid reasons why audiences find Shang Chi's source material to be controversial and I love the discussion that's taking place. This ... not so much."
"Is The Asian Lead For Marvel "Too Ugly" For Chinese People? [Street Interview] | ASIAN BOSS"
"god i fucking hate him so so much! all blm protesters and troons combined don't cry victims as much as this ugly neanderthal, he could be in every big movie ever, win 10 oscars and nevertheless still claim he's discriminated against because muh beauty standards…"
"it's plain misogyny disguised as homophobia. rn it's a trend in china to pair up super young actors with more mature actresses. in other asian countries you too have pretty boys as the most sucessful singers and actors. there's a huge market catering to what most girls and women want. meanwhile in the us and europe they mock them for looking girly/faggy, mock women who are attracted to men with proper hygiene but in reality they just don't want us to have anything. the only movies genuinely catering to a female audience are teen romance flicks - and everybody everywhere is always making fun of those and shaming the viewers. they know that it's over once they're no longer able to brainwash us into keeping our standards low…"

Bloody Awful Work Creeps in When Standards Are Relaxed

Bloody Awful Work Creeps in When Standards Are Relaxed

"It is not [Arday's] fault that everybody who has made a decision to employ him has been either credulous or slovenly, and it is right to pity anybody who is being publicly humiliated even while recognising they at least partly deserve it. 

More importantly, it is abundantly evident that Arday is being made a scapegoat, and that a lot of the opprobrium being visited on him is deflected guilt. The truth of the matter is that plagiarism, fantasising and bad scholarship are rife in the UK academy among staff and students, particularly since the advent of large language models, and that almost everybody is implicated in those problems to some extent or other. Arday is a great Guy Fawkes figure to hurl onto the metaphorical bonfire, not least because he also serves as an embodiment of many of the sins of EDI – a phenomenon which even many of its public adherents no doubt find privately disturbing. But he is not the real problem. The real problem is that for too long standards have been in decline, everybody knows it and everybody is complicit in it. Arday is just the vector through which collective frustration can be channelled away from a genuine confrontation with the bigger issue. 

That issue has, I think, three facets. I am going to label these in accordance with the three features of a modern academic career, namely teaching, research and academic administration, but there is of course rather a lot of overlap between those things. The overarching connection between them, as you will see, is a relaxation of standards, and ultimately the desire to sacrifice them to make life easier. Overarching that is an uglier truth still – the oldest story in the book: pigs with their faces in the trough.

Teaching first, then. There is no doubt whatsoever that the nature of undergraduate students has changed, and that universities have not found a way collectively to cope with that change – roughly, I would say, beginning in 2016 or so. I want to make clear from the outset that I do not blame students themselves for this change, for one moment. It is attributable almost entirely to the effects of technology, most obviously the smartphone but also including the phenomenon of 24/7 screen-based streaming of entertainment, and – more recently – AI. And layered on top of that are the lingering consequences of Covid lockdowns, still being felt but little discussed.

Ask any university lecturer who still works at the coalface of undergraduate teaching and they will tell you the same story. Prior to the mid-2010s, teaching – if the material and tutor were engaging – was like traffic control. Students came to tutorials having done the required reading, sometimes more than the required reading, or were at least able to bluff having done it. They were happy to speak up and offer their views about the material. They may not have understood anything. But they were happy to talk, to look the tutor in the eye, to make notes and to demonstrate engagement. In lectures, they looked as though they were listening.

Something has changed – the devices, stupid – and with it engagement...

Universities have collectively shown themselves to be entirely inadequate to the task of coping with this issue. Faced with cohort after cohort of students who lack the proper mindset – again, to be clear, I do not blame the students themselves at all for this – to do concentrated reading or thinking, they have taken the path of least resistance and simply expected less. Not wanting to fail people who cannot do what is required (and thereby miss out on future fees), and not wanting to slip down the league tables by failing to award sufficient numbers of good grades, university managers have placed pressure on staff to relax standards. And so standards have been relaxed. What is required to get a good degree at a good university – let alone a bad university – is just not the same as what it was 20 years ago, and everybody knows it...

The pressure on academics to publish and garner research income for their universities has become intense. This, in UK universities at least, is largely because of something called the Research Excellence Framework, or REF. This, to cut a long story short, is a periodic audit of the research output of all of the institutions who participate (i.e., essentially all of them), the results of which both decide how a big pot of public money is divided between them, and feed into important league table metrics. The more outputs per head of staff, and the ‘better’ the outputs, the more money the university is allocated – nobody ever asks the opportunity costs in terms of staff time spent on non-research activities – and the higher up the league tables the institution rises.

Prior to the existence of the REF, and its precursor, the RAE, academic research in the humanities and social sciences was performed chiefly only by scholars at the top universities and they did it fairly sporadically – i.e., when they had something useful to say. Writing a good textbook and keeping it up-to-date, certainly in law, the field with which I am most familiar, was at least as important for one’s reputation as producing peer-reviewed articles in journals or academic monographs. But since every institution more or less engages in the REF these days, and since this includes all of the institutions where previously no academic research would have been done at all, there are now simply many, many more things being published than would have been the case 30 or 40 years ago – all of the thousands upon thousands of academics who previously would not have been producing scholarship, have to.

Add this to the sheer increase in academic staff that has accompanied expanded student numbers in the last two decades, and the result is vast oceans of ink being spilled on work that is – may I speak frankly? – tripe...

The more people there are publishing, the lower the average quality of their publications. And since more people need to be publishing, there need to be more outlets for their publications – generally edited and overseen by precisely the same people who are writing the papers. The consequence of all of this is a huge expanse in the number of academic journals which exist to churn out terrible nonsense that only the truly demented would ever bother to read, let alone write – generally produced merely to satisfy internal departmental requirements. Average standards, as a result, have fallen off a cliff...

University departments can, to all intents and purposes, more or less run themselves, and this is how they indeed used to operate. Vice-Chancellorships and other major institutional posts were held on a rotating basis by senior professors, and departments largely made their own budgetary, staffing and timetabling decisions. University senates wielded decision-making power. Within departments the Chairs ran the show and Head of School positions were, again, usually on three-year rotations. A career in academic management did not really exist. This set-up no doubt had its problems – it was, by all accounts, pretty oligarchic, and gave too much power to professors to bestow patronage. But it was a system which emphasised autonomy and common sense, and crucially had low overheads.

Since the mid-1980s, however, management has ballooned. Vice-Chancellors are now akin to chief executives – they swap positions at different universities like football managers – and a vast number of permanent chief-cook-and-bottle-washer type positions have come into existence alongside them. (“Nice to meet you, my name is Steve Smith and I’m the Deputy Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Overseas Engagement Activities, Dog-Petting and Soft Play.”) Alongside this, external regulatory requirements, as well as massive pressure to improve ‘student satisfaction’, have resulted in a huge proliferation of compliance officers, careers advisers, widening participation experts, mental health support workers and so on.

And at the same time, perversely, the workload of academic staff has become increasingly dominated by desk-based busywork, as it presumably has in any field you would care to name – responding to emails, going to meetings, behaving as though it is terribly important that something-or-other has been ‘approved’ on ‘the system’ and so on. The ‘lived experience’ of being a mid-career academic in the UK is not all that different from being, say, manager of a call centre on an industrial estate just outside Darlington: a lot of grappling with bits of software that don’t talk to each other, a lot of deleting irrelevant emails, a lot of meetings scheduled by people who are compensating for nonexistent social lives.

In other words, even as the stakes have grown progressively lower, with everything becoming easier and more lackadaisical at a practical level, at an administrative level there has been obscene bloat. And this has been mirrored by a pivot towards vaunting rhetoric: almost every university in the country now boasts a corporate strategy that promises to “Point the way ahead so that together we can make a better world”, “enrich lives and change the world through the advancement of learning”, “Creat[e] Progressive Futures – flourishing, sustainability and progress for the whole world [sic]” and so on.

This razzle-dazzle is nakedly a marketing ploy for the most part, of course, but it also reflects the character of the people in charge of these institutions. Gone are the days when universities were run by port-swilling dons in tweed jackets and corduroys. They are now run by people who imagine themselves to be terribly important, earn £350,000 a year and have ambitions to match. Who among them wants to be seen doing anything as humdrum and tawdry as providing students with a good education? What is that when set against ensuring that the whole world achieves “flourishing, sustainability and progress”? A curious mixture of hubris and dumbing-down follows: the laxer things become, the more grandiose becomes the ludicrous, overweening bluster...

We expect less and less of undergraduates; we delude ourselves into thinking that universities are of profound importance in the project of global improvement and progress; we waste time producing an awful lot of unreadable, unhelpful ‘research’ that almost nobody reads. No, few of us have done anything as bad as the things Arday has been accused of. But we – I speak to any fellow academics reading this – are all implicated in a collective failing; it has happened on our watch.

At its heart, the reason for the decline is simple enough to understand. Maintaining standards is hard. The path of least resistance is seductive. And it is especially seductive when set against a background of the rent-seeking behaviour of a group of institutions that increasingly resemble a cartel, whose chief priority is maximising the generation of income largely underwritten by the State. The incentives are not to educate, much less to advance knowledge, but to do a) what is necessary to satisfy regulators and b) what is necessary to keep the show on the road and the money rolling in.

These are the incentives that any private sector enterprise faces, of course, but the crucial distinction is that UK universities do not operate in anything like the ‘private sector’ properly understood. When most of your income comes from the State, your interests are brought into alignment with political decision-makers, rather than with what is best for the students or the long-term interests of the operation, and suckling at its teat rapidly becomes your be-all and end-all – horizons narrow accordingly. This was not a problem when a Vice-Chancellorship was a chore performed reluctantly by a crusty don for a three-year term and student numbers were capped – at that time, financial stakes were low. But it is a problem when an entire class of university managers relies for its very high salaries on the cash washing in from almost half of school leavers going on to higher education. In that context, it is easy to simply go along, doing what is necessary to carry on carrying on, and not rock the boat by insisting on standards being maintained. Why fight against the institutional tide when there is no incentive or reward to do so?

It probably goes without saying that the advent of AI has made everything described here worse, and will likely make it worse yet if universities are not willing to grapple with that problem seriously and take practical steps to eliminate its use – at least in assessments but preferably in general. I hold out little hope that this will happen, for reasons which are obvious enough. The person instrumental in exposing this recent plagiarism scandal, a retired professor at Plymouth Marjon University called Dave Harris, summarised the problem with Arday’s scholarship as follows: “Bloody awful work creeps in when standards are relaxed.” This seems set to be the leitmotif of UK universities in the 21st Century. And it is no good simply blaming the odd rogue scholar, for all that subjecting him to a two minutes’ hate is cathartic in some sense. The crisis is systemic, which means everybody is in some way to blame."

 

 

 

Links - 15th September 2026 (Feminism)

Iranian star Parastoo Ahmadi reportedly sentenced to 74 lashes for singing without hijab - "Iran Iranian star Parastoo Ahmadi reportedly sentenced to 74 lashes for singing without hijab  Musicians and production team understood to be facing same punishment after livestream of patriotic song Deepa Parent Thu 18 Jun 2026 21.35 BST  The Iranian singer Parastoo Ahmadi and eight members of a production team, including musicians, have been reportedly sentenced to 74 lashes for performing in a concert livestreamed on Ahmadi’s YouTube channel in 2024.  According to court documents, the criminal court of Qom province sentenced the artists to flogging, a two-year ban on leaving the country and a two-year ban on engaging in artistic activities on charges that include offending public decency through the production and publication of “vulgar and immoral content” online... In December 2024, the 29-year-old singer performed the patriotic song Az Khoone Javanane Vatan (From the Blood of the Youth of the Homeland) without a hijab in a livestreamed performance that went viral... For Iranian artists, the ruling, though not unexpected, has deepened fears of escalating cultural repression.  The Iranian-British actor Nazanin Boniadi said: “The sentencing of singer Parastoo Ahmadi to flogging for the simple act of singing publicly without a hijab is a stark reminder that, despite talk in Washington of a ‘new regime’ in Iran, the Islamic republic’s machinery of repression remains unchanged.  “Accommodating a regime that flogs women for their voices and kills citizens for demanding their rights only emboldens it to continue down its tyrannical path.”  The Iranian actor Setareh Maleki, who was forced into exile after starring in Mohammad Rasoulof’s Oscar-nominated film The Seed of the Sacred Fig, said the performance had a powerful emotive impact on her. She told the Guardian: “When I watched the video of Parastoo Ahmadi’s concert, it reignited the spirit of resistance in me. For days, I kept watching the videos over and over again, and I felt immensely proud of Parastoo.  “Knowing all the consequences she would have to face, she still refused to give up her right, as a woman, to live, to sing and to be heard. Iranian women never stop fighting against tyranny, not even for a moment, and that is truly remarkable.”  She added: “For an Iranian artist who refuses to comply with censorship inside Iran, the daily routine is a form of resistance."
Damn 1953 CIA "coup" forcing Iran to impose the hijab on women!

Meme - "OTTAWA-CARLETON DISTRICT SCHOOL BOARD 2025-2026 Excellence in Equity Student Award Nominees
Achta M. Bell High School *girl [?] in niqab with tiny eye window*"
Does equity mean that non-Muslim women need to wear niqabs too?

Meme - "FEMINIST *Ayaan Hirsi Ali*
-Supports equality
- Anti misogynistic regimes
- Anti Islam
- Anti domestic abuse
- Anti human trafficking
- Anti female genital mutilation
- Anti aranged marriages and honor killings
- advocates for womens education and freedom of speech
WESTERN "FEMINIST" *Sarah Wakefield*
- Worships "Diversity"
- Supports grooming gangs
- Throws rape victims in jail for "hate speech"
- imports millions of rapists from the most mysoginistic cultures on earth
- Gives cross-dressing sex pests access to underage girls' bathrooms
- Refuses to deport human traffickers
- legalised incest specifically to cater to muslims"

Feminist sub debates the aptness of calling men trash, overwhelmingly agrees that REVENGE for the past 4000 years is a "fair and sensible" justification : r/MensRights - "The OP poses a valid question; if it's ok to generalize about men, what about women?
If a man says that “women are manipulative”, we rightly regard the statement as a sexist generalization;
https://imgur.com/a/VmAxr0J
By far the most upvoted response is that REVENGE for the past 4000 years is a "fair and sensible" justification for generalizing about men but not about women:
https://imgur.com/a/TkNkn3t
I mean, it is refreshing to see feminists openly reveal what they really think."
Clearly, feminism helps men too

NotMelissaVitelli on X - "Democrats screamed about Trump putting us all in the handmaids tale Meanwhile their entire party is turning into burka wearing women 🤣 It’s too easy"

A Moral Double Standard on Marital Infidelity - "Surveys have consistently found that most Americans find marital infidelity morally objectionable. Yet, American attitudes are more complex than they first appear. Public attitudes about the morality of infidelity are conditioned on whether it is committed by a man or a woman. Roughly two-thirds (66 percent) of Americans say that when a man has an affair it is always morally wrong. Fewer Americans (55 percent) say it is always morally wrong when a woman has an extramarital affair. Both women and men exhibit a double standard in evaluating the morality of extramarital affairs, although this is somewhat larger among women. Seventy percent of women say that a married man who has an affair is always morally wrong, while fewer (56 percent) say the same when married women have relationships outside their marriage. Gender plays a more modest role among men in how they judge the morality of marital infidelity. Fifty-three percent of men say it is always morally wrong for a woman to have an affair, while 61 percent say same for men.   The extent to which women judge the behavior of married women and men varies significantly by race. There is a massive gap in the views of Hispanic men and women. Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of Hispanic women believe that a man having an affair is always wrong, while slightly more than half (53 percent) of Hispanic men agree. Conversely, black women assess the morality of marital infidelity about equally whether it is committed by a man or woman (65% vs. 63 %)   Differences also emerge by educational attainment. No group of women is more forgiving of marital infidelity than those with post-graduate degrees. Less than half (45 percent) of women who have an advanced degree say it is always wrong when women commit adultery. In contrast, 61 percent of women with no more than a high school education say this is morally wrong regardless of the circumstances.   There is a notable age gap as well. Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of young women say it is always morally wrong for a man to have an affair, while only about half (51 percent) say the same for a woman. The double standard among older women is not nearly as large. Sixty-nine percent of senior women say it is always wrong for a married man to have an affair while six in ten say it is always wrong when a woman does."
Yet another sexual double standard that feminists don't care about. Given the age and education effects, it looks like feminism is promoting the double standard. The author is wrong about the literature on the alleged body count double standard

Proposed tougher penalties for theft would punish mostly women – and harm their daughters - "New Ministry of Justice projections predict a dramatic gender shift in New Zealand’s prison population over the next decade, partly due to a proposed law that would increase penalties for theft.  While the total number of people in prison is expected to grow by around 35%, the number of women behind bars is forecast to jump by 63%, almost double the overall rate.  The government’s Crimes Amendment Bill seeks to introduce a new category of low-value theft committed in an “offensive, threatening, insulting or disorderly manner”...   If this bill becomes law, it will affect women disproportionately because theft is more commonly a charge that leads to women being put in remand prison.   Share article  Print article  New Ministry of Justice projections predict a dramatic gender shift in New Zealand’s prison population over the next decade, partly due to a proposed law that would increase penalties for theft.  While the total number of people in prison is expected to grow by around 35%, the number of women behind bars is forecast to jump by 63%, almost double the overall rate.  The government’s Crimes Amendment Bill seeks to introduce a new category of low-value theft committed in an “offensive, threatening, insulting or disorderly manner”.  The bill’s explanatory note makes the intention clear: it is designed to allow harsher penalties for “retail crime […] when the threshold for robbery is not met”.  Under current law, robbery requires stealing from a person using force, threats or intimidation. The new category blurs an important legal distinction because it covers conduct that is non-violent but would attract penalties closer to those used for violent crime.  If this bill becomes law, it will affect women disproportionately because theft is more commonly a charge that leads to women being put in remand prison.  Men are typically remanded for other offences than theft, so they are less likely to be affected by the proposed law... The policy intended to make the public safer may, in fact, make life far less safe for the children of the women who will be imprisoned for petty theft...   New Zealand research estimates the mass incarceration of Māori men in the 1980s and 1990s – largely driven by Māori urbanisation, biased government policies and practices, and the youthfulness of the Māori population – likely exposed Māori girls to a 5.5 times greater risk of childhood sexual abuse compared with Pākehā girls."
If you think female criminals should go to prison, you're a misogynist and hate children. Just like if you think Maori criminals should go to prison, you're a racist and coloniser

James L. Nuzzo, PhD on X - "Gender studies academics are holding panel discussions on how to deal with the growing public criticism of their work. Of course, the problem is not them; it is you. You do not fully understand their greatness. "Programmes like [Gender Equality and Social Justice] are vulnerable in this moment because what we do is both crucial and hard to count. At our best, we do not simply deliver content. We build capacities that universities and democratic societies say they want but rarely know how to recognize, much less defend, when money gets tight. We teach students how to read power, how to think across difference, how to stay with difficulty, how to reflect on themselves as knowers, and how to move between intellectual and social worlds that do not easily meet.""
Jonathan Kay on X - "one of the “threats” to gender studies listed by the authors is “enrolment targets”"
Michael De Robertis on X - "When I first joined the faculty at a leading Canadian university, Women's Studies could do no wrong. Their programs were flooded with $ and bodies. Within a generation, their enrolments dwindled and they were incorporated with Gender Studies. And so it goes!"

Meme - Feminist News: "Bravo to this mom for supporting her child and leaving behind people who won't."
Kim Ji-yoo: "My daughter is 17, she's a senior in high school. Her boyfriend's 18, also senior in high school. They've been dating for three years. They have just started being sexually active. I told myself I'd handle these situations better than my parents did. What should I do? I guess I'll talk with her father when he's home."
Kim Ji-yoo: "Took my daughter out to play tennis today. Yesterday I discussed getting her on birth control with her father. He was angry and started yelling at her. Called her a slut, said she was grounded and can never leave the house. Well Do- Yun ... If you are reading this .. she is out of the house, with me ... Having a nice little girls day. Also if I didn't tell you, we are getting a divorce."
"Those commending this have some serious issues. I cannot imagine being an adolescent and my mother exposing my deeply personal stages of life to the internet for likes. No words can express how f**king weird this is."
Feminists hate men and love divorce

Adam Grant on X - "It's sad that women's success is a threat to marriages. 544k couples, 29 countries: Separation is 36% more likely when women outearn their partners. The risk goes up further if they have children. A woman's prosperity should be a source of pride, not relationship conflict."
Lisa Britton on X - "This post implies it’s men who are not able to handle their woman being “successful.” But tons of research shows that women still desire partners who earn more than they do. What if it’s not simply “ugh, men!” that’s the problem, but it’s the women who are resentful?"

The Conscious Lee (@theconsciouslee) - "iMa bE a fEmiNiSt bUt cApItAliSm jUsT nEeDs sOmE rEfOrM. Nah. You can't divorce the two, because the two was never separate to begin with. Patriarchy and capitalism ain't roommates who happened to move in together, they are load bearing walls in the same house, and you can't knock one down while promising to keep the other one standing.  Start with the history, because the history is where the receipts live. Silvia Federici showed us that capitalism didn't just inherit patriarchy, capitalism built itself on patriarchy. Before the factory could exist, Europe had to enclose the commons, criminalize women's independence, burn hundreds of thousands of women as witches, and convert women's bodies into machines for producing the next generation of workers.  Apply Federici here: the witch hunts wasn't some medieval superstition, the witch hunts was labor discipline. Capital needed a class of people whose work would never be paid, whose cooking and cleaning and birthing and raising would be renamed "love" and "duty" so the boss could pay one wage and extract two lifetimes of labor. That's not capitalism tolerating patriarchy. That's capitalism requiring it."
The left wing agenda is all connected. The same people who claim capitalism is inherently linked to patriarchy mock those who point out that feminism and other post Marxist ideologies are linked to Marxism

Million-year-old footprints show gender divide among our ancient relatives - "Fossilised footprints of our ancient human relatives show that even in the Pleistocene, males and females had separate roles.  Around 1.4 million years ago, a group of eight hominins left their prints in the moist ground surrounding Lake Turkana – located in what is now Kenya – where they were preserved.  The group members, all male, were stocky ancient relatives of humans called Paranthropus boisei and new research shows they would have stood as tall as Homo erectus, which lived nearby.  The reason for the all-male trip is unknown, but there is a noticeable absence of women and children, suggesting there was sex segregation for certain excursions or tasks in the earliest hominin communities. In modern ape groups, males form strong, cooperative networks, jointly defending territory, patrolling boundaries and hunting together."
How ignorant. Don't they know about the myth of Man the Hunter?!

Emma Watson, 35, says the pressure to get married is 'a violence' against young people
LindyMan on X - "Reminder. All traditional patterns have collapsed. You are free to do anything and organize your life as you want. There is no pressure from any group or society or institution. The modernity project is complete. You are liberated.   Many people cannot handle this truth so they make up fake statements about things "pressuring" them. It doesn't exist."
To left wingers, speech they disapprove of is violence, and violence they approve of is speech

Young women are completely wrong about relationships - "Did you know that one of the fastest-growing cohorts in the US is single, child-free, young women? So much so, in fact, that by the end of this decade, 45 per cent of women aged 25 to 44 will neither have married nor had a baby, according to a report by Morgan Stanley.  Keen to better understand this – and concerned because trends that originate across the pond typically turn up on UK shores before long – I found myself drawn into reading the bank’s reflections on the “Rise of the SHEconomy”.  It suggested that young women today are staying single because they are “more focused on advancing their careers”, they “desire more financial independence”, their “relationship standards are higher” and “their priority is personal fulfilment”. Ouch... Having a partner is not “embarrassing”, as a piece in Vogue suggested last year, but a source of deep fulfilment. It needn’t be the case that a love life comes at the cost of professional success, or vice versa.  I say this as a woman who has had a very successful career, including garnering that all-important financial independence, while also being a wife and mother. I know I am fortunate to be part of the first generation able to “have it all”. I just hope the young women of today don’t decide to also make us the last. The simple truth is that it’s all very well focusing on the career or the money, but no job ever loves you back. The graveyards are full of “essential” chief executives, editors, politicians and leaders. All careers end. And we are, whether we believe it or not, all infinitely replaceable to our employers. However good you are, they can always find someone else to do your job.  The only people to whom we are truly irreplaceable are our families and friends. Yes, it is fulfilling to earn your own money. Yes, it is gratifying to be respected and esteemed in an industry. But it is even sweeter to do both of those things and have deliciously gorgeous children, plus a partner who loves you. I worry that by prioritising “personal fulfilment”, money and career success over their relationships, young women today are going to miss out on the one thing that is crucial to true human flourishing – being seen, loved and valued for who we are.   Nothing is more important than having an intimate witness to grow old with who cares what we had for lunch. And that’s without mentioning the demographic disaster these trends are unleashing, with birth rates in the West plummeting rapidly. Of course, it is tiring to try to do – and have – it all at once, which is why it is so important for those who want a family to choose their partners wisely.  The most successful women I know tend to have a partner whose job is not their defining feature, and who is around to do school drop-offs and go to Sainsbury’s. One who realises that a family needs different kinds of inputs and isn’t too macho to be the lead parent or the domestic chief executive."

James Lindsay, anti-Communist on X - "Canada seems to be trying to set some kind of record for being a completely self-unaware Woke retard country, and this official parliamentary report on combating antifeminism is a great unintentionally hilarious but terrifying new example."
James Lindsay, anti-Communist on X - "Everything in this ultra-retarded report is guaranteed to make worse the exact problem it seeks to address, to the degree it hits legitimate points, because their answer to backlash to feminism and male and normal person alienation is more alienating, unfair feminist nonsense."

Uri Kurlianchik on X - "Liberal women see men from soft and peaceful societies as rapists and oppressors but treat men from hardened barbarian tribes as if they were stray puppies. Make this make sense."

Pamela Anderson declares herself an ‘anti-feminist’ - "the 49-year-old discussed her concerns over gender roles as people become more 'androgynous'. 'Men get weaker in an authoritarian environment; they don't need to be as manly. And women are working... who's watching the kids? I may get some heat for this, but I consider myself an "anti-feminist",' she said... 'I obviously believe in treating people equally, but men and women are different for a reason, with very important roles to play,' she explained.  Pamela also claimed she worries the 'world will forget how to make love'."

We should be putting more women in prison, not letting them all out - "Send fewer women to prison. That’s the consensus across the political spectrum. It is part of Andy Burnham’s plan to free up prison places for men. The Conservatives have said they are sympathetic and even Colin Sutton, Reform’s newly elected Police and Crime Commissioner for Norfolk, advocates it. Needless to say, prison reform charities are all in favour.  Apparently enough women could safely be released to repurpose HMP Bronzefield, England’s largest women’s prison housing over 500, for male offenders.  As with anything that has become an unquestioned truth, the idea that we are locking up too many women needs to be interrogated. A strong case can be made for the opposite position: that too few women are serving custodial sentences.  There are over 87,000 prisoners in England and Wales, but only around 4 per cent or 3,500 of these are women. This is a dramatic change from times past.  According to House of Commons figures, in 1900 17 per cent of prisoners were women... At 4 per cent of the prison population, we imprison a lower proportion of women than many other countries. In the United States about 10 per cent of the prison population is female. In Hong Kong, with the highest proportion, it is over 20 per cent; in Iceland it is 12 per cent and in famously liberal Sweden it is double that of the English and Welsh rate at almost 8 per cent. The only major Western countries that imprison a lower percentage of women are France and Israel. Having low female incarceration rates is hardly an indicator of female empowerment: Saudi Arabia’s are amongst the world’s lowest. Should there be more men in prison than women? Of course, men are responsible for vastly more violent crime. That said, it must be noted that over 1,000 of the 3,500 English and Welsh female prisoners are inside for violent offences, including murder. Three hundred and fifty or so are serving life sentences, which will be predominantly for murder or, in some instances, manslaughter... There will always be a gender disparity in prison populations. But it appears to have got out of hand here in Britain... Prison reformers always argue that non-custodial punishments can be more onerous than prison time and are getting tougher. If this were the case, one might imagine some defendants would prefer a prison term to a non-custodial alternative. Speak to any defence solicitor: they will never have met a defendant who would rather be banged up than face a community order.  There is good reason to believe that many fewer women are charged with offences than could be. Speak to defence lawyers and some will admit that there is often enough evidence to charge wives and girlfriends of drug dealers and other serious criminals with offences themselves, but they very rarely are so charged. As the Nicola Sturgeon affair indicates, it may be entirely possible for a fraudster’s wag to be unaware of her man’s crimes. But to be living with a drug dealer, you would need to be exceptionally obtuse not to know what your partner is up to. With some narrow exceptions (largely relating to terrorism, child sex offences, or performing a job in, for example, banking with specific reporting responsibilities) not reporting a crime is not a crime. But for many criminals’ wags, defence lawyers will tell you there is often clear evidence that their involvement goes much further.  Criminals respond to incentives and deterrents like the rest of us. If virtually no non-violent female offenders will face prison (and only this would make a meaningful difference to prison overcrowding), then the number of non-violent female offenders will surely go up. And criminal gangs will be incentivised to use them.  To argue that fewer women should be sent to prison is not feminist and denies them agency. True equality means banging up more women."
Of course, if you want women to be sentenced the same way as men, you're a misogynist

William Meijer on X - "Western women have won nearly every political battle over the last century, and yet they seemingly feel worse than ever compared to men. Social scientists have no good explanation why.  My theory is that people high in empathization and low in systemization tend to unknowingly pursue multiple desires incompatible with one another, as well as unique desires incompatible with their own persistence. Optimizing for women's incompatible desires thus creates frustration and unfulfillment in women.  An example of desires incompatible with one another is women's marital and political preferences. Women tend to be attracted to men of equal or higher socioeconomic status, while they tend to vote for income equality. The result is too few eligible men, dissatisfaction with the male dating pool, and lower-than-ever coupling rates.  An example of a desire incompatible with its own persistence is the desire for social liberalism. Western women want to feel kind and consistently vote for liberal parties that orchestrate mass immigration from illiberal cultures. They then denounce the rise of masculinist figures such as Andrew Tate, a man much more popular among non-Whites, a man whose audience they voted to bring into their country.  This is the best theory I could think of. What's yours?"
Moral Dynamics on X - "Theory: This form of a Kafka trap is biology’s way of periodically pumping up male dominance orientations.  Either an invader comes to “right” things, or the local guys step up into fascism (or equivalent) to get the momentum to do so.  Either way you get a large group oriented toward aggression.  What’s counter-fit at one level, like unhappiness, is very-fit at another level, like large-group society.  My 0.02"

An ideology without a name

From 2020. In 2026 you might call it wokeness (or at least one aspect of it; even if left wingers are pretending not to understand things and claiming that critics can't define it) but really cancel culture was always just one aspect of it

Left wing gaslighting had a predecessor in Communist propaganda - it was meant to demoralise.

If you oppose the left wing's attempt to radically remake society, you are the bad person for starting a culture war and creating wedge issues. But if you push it, you are a decent human and not political. 

It's ironic that left wingers denounce identity groups like religion (or rather, Christianity), the nation and family, but are so into identity politics, fetishising group membership that, in theory, one cannot change (unlike the ones they hate so much).

An ideology without a name - spiked

"Many activists targeting historical statues or calling into question the intellectual or moral legacy of human civilisation insist that they are not cultural warriors. Their Culture War Denialism coexists with the claim that it is the people who want to protect such statues from acts of vandalism who bear responsibility for unleashing a cultural conflict.

The most striking manifestation of Culture War Denialism is the claim that there is no such thing as cancel culture, and that those who argue otherwise are simply promoting a right-wing myth. An earlier version of Culture War Denialism, during the past decade, was promoted on university campuses by activists who asserted that there was no problem with free speech in higher education. They insisted that the free-speech crisis in universities was a fantasy invented by right-wing ideologues. During the 1980s and 1990s, Culture War Denialism was expressed through the claim that political correctness was a myth. Despite the steady rise in the policing of speech, the censoring of language, and the invention of an entirely new vocabulary of words, it was claimed that there was no truth to the charge of political correctness. Apparently, that, too, was a right-wing myth.

Back in the 1960s there was more clarity about the Culture War. This was the era of the counterculture, and those who supported it had no inhibition about acknowledging that they were vehemently opposed to their society’s culture. However, though supporters of the counterculture knew what they were against, they were far less certain about the culture they wished to endorse. At that time, and in the 1970s, the term counterculture was sometimes referred to as ‘adversarial culture’. Terms like counterculture and adversarial culture, as well terms used later, such as political correctness, lack clarity and precision. They all try to capture and render explicit a variety of implicit assumptions – an ideology without a name. The use of the term cancel culture is but the latest attempt to name a political phenomenon that usually refuses to acknowledge its very existence. 

These 12 theses on the Culture War aim to provide a perspective on its genesis and current trajectory:

1) Today’s Culture War has evolved slowly, sometimes hesitatingly, from the 1940s onwards. Its targets were the settled cultural boundaries that distinguished people, nations, families, communities, and religions, in fact anything that distinguished people from one another. It sought to distance people from their cultural affiliations and previous ways of life. To this day, it attempts both to de-territorialise people and detach them from their past. 

2) Animosity against cultural boundaries acquired a quasi-ideological quality in the 1940s. Opponents of Western culture and civilisation were particularly hostile to the nation, an institution they held responsible for two world wars. They looked to international institutions, global governance, to solve the problems facing humanity. The most forceful and coherent doctrinal expression of this standpoint can be found in Karl Popper’s book, The Open Society and Its Enemies. Popper, along with a significant section of Western cosmopolitans, regarded closed societies – especially nations – as a source of conflict and destruction. 

3) Cosmopolitans’ idea of the ‘open society’ was directly contrasted to closed ones. From their perspective, a closed society was one that possessed what they perceived as a tribalist mentality, one that excluded other people from a group. What was at issue was not simply nationality, but any form of private and non-political bonds between people – such as religion, family and community. These bonds were decried on the grounds that they were discriminatory. From the standpoint of the ideology of openness, even citizenship was portrayed as discriminatory. Citizenship violated the principle of openness on the grounds that it was not open to all, providing citizens with rights that were not available to all the people who inhabit the earth. 

4) Cutting pre-political bonds between generations and members of a so-called closed community was seen as the pre-requisite for the rise of the modern person. For Popper, this modern individual was what he called an abstract person – someone detached from previous generations and other people, as well as from the past. 

5) In reality, a human being cannot exist entirely as an abstraction. We need to possess an identity for ourselves, and indeed we can become peculiarly concerned with personal identity. So the ideology of openness, and the detachment of people from their closed and so-called tribalist existence, creates an unprecedented demand for identity. The subsequent explosion of new identities from the 1960s onwards has seamlessly led to the politicisation of identity. Inventing new identities, or making previously unimportant identities more and more political, is one of the main accomplishments of the imperative of openness. 

6) According to the ideology of the open society, the value of openness trumps democracy. Popper was not fond of a democracy based on a closed group of citizens. He argued that democracy often worked to reinforce previously existing loyalties and attachments and resisted opening up society to new values. That is why, for him, the value of openness trumped that of democracy. Opening up communities to the ideology of openness was far more important than people’s democratic rights. That is why he advocated support for an interventionist form of ‘democratic imperialism’, in order to open up closed societies. 

7) The transformation of openness into a fundamental cultural value has been one of the principal accomplishments of the ideology without a name. Almost imperceptibly, openness has become transformed into a hegemonic value in the Western world. Openness is now perceived as good in and of itself. However, its objective of detaching society from its previous culture is rarely made explicit as a value. And people’s discomfort with the ideology of openness has too often been silenced.

8) As a value, openness is anything but open. It is certainly not open to accepting democratic decision-making. It does not believe in the open exchange of ideas with individuals who apparently have a closed mentality, or with identities that steadfastly remain connected to their traditional culture. 

9) It has taken four or five generations for the values associated with openness, for the ideology without a name, to become ascendant. During this time the old counterculture has become increasingly dominant. In recent years, the terrain of the Culture Wars – which was for a long time confined to educational and cultural institutions – has expanded to the private sector. The ease with which companies and other private institutions have internalised formerly countercultural norms shows that there are very few obstacles standing in the way of the triumph of the ideology without a name. The speed with which this new war on the past, this war on the legacy of Western culture, has accelerated this year illustrates this point.

10) It is only now that this ideology has finally acquired a recognisable form and a provisional name: cancel culture. We have had to wait around 80 years for this in many ways confusing term to emerge. However, unlike previous terms – counterculture, adversarial culture, etc – ‘cancel culture’ at least draws attention to the corrosive impact and hegemonic role of the ideology that previously had no name. Those in charge of ‘cancelling’ are not the contemporary equivalent of 1960s hippies and student radicals; the cancellers are the elites, they run many of the key institutions of society. 

One reason why the term cancel culture has finally emerged is that, in recent times, the ideology that underpins it has become more explicit and clear about its objectives. For example, the 1619 Project of the New York Times constitutes an ambitious programme of de-legitimating the so-called American Way of Life – attempting to locate the nation’s birth not with the Declaration of Independence, but with the arrival of slaves. It does not merely demand the change of a name, or a pronoun – the 1619 Project demands a change in how Americans think about their nation and about history. Through waging a war against the legacy of the founding of America, and more widely of the legacy of human civilisation, opposition to Western culture has acquired a systematic ideological form. 

11) Even now there is a reluctance to take the Culture War seriously. Advocates of opening up everything and calling into question all civilisational accomplishments insist that they are not fighting a Culture War. Like the Germans who, when they invaded Poland, argued that it was the Polish who started it, advocates of the ‘open society’ point the finger of blame at their opponents. They accuse Trump of stoking up the fire of the Culture War, and present themselves as the innocent victims of malicious right-wing culture warriors.

12) Despite their hegemonic status, proponents of this ideology are far from confident or secure. They do not understand why millions of people want to hold on to their cultural traditions and reject the globalist vision of an open world. The rise of populism in recent years has unnerved these new elites, which is why they have stepped up their efforts to cancel their opponents. They are determined to prevent a repetition of a setback like Brexit, and as far as they are concerned the Culture War is only beginning. 

Unfortunately, their determination to press on is not matched by those who oppose cancel culture. It is necessary not simply to respond to and fight back against cancel culture, but to take the initiative and go on the offensive. What is at stake is the intellectual and cultural legacy of human civilisation. Surely this precious legacy is worth fighting for? 

Is It Time to ‘Liquidate’ the Study of Sociology?

In 2026, left wingers no longer pretend that truth exists. 

Is It Time to ‘Liquidate’ the Study of Sociology? - WSJ
Sociology has long been tasked with investigating society’s most pressing challenges. But these days, sociologists’ greatest obstacle may be themselves.

Why are some people richer than others? What drives societal ills or ignites a social movement? Why aren’t people having more kids? 

These are some of the most important questions facing the country today. The answers shape our lives, polarize our politics and supercharge our culture wars. 

Sociology, the discipline tasked with pursuing the answers, would seem well poised to take these issues on. For decades, its analyses informed policy on issues ranging from criminal justice to immigration to urban development. It introduced groundbreaking concepts like “white-collar crime,” “gentrification,” “unintended consequences” and “cultural capital.” At various points, sociologists proposed and critiqued affirmative action, inspired and lambasted welfare reform, diagnosed and dismissed the breakdown of the nuclear family. 

Yet today, sociologists are embroiled in an ideological and existential battle of their own—one that is increasingly public and at least in part of their own making. The study of people, in other words, has a people problem.

In 2023, Florida’s then-commissioner of education Manny Diaz, Jr., homed in on sociology as culture war enemy No. 1. It had been “hijacked by left-wing activists,” he said, leading the state to remove introduction to sociology from its general education curriculum at all public colleges and universities across the state.

The American Sociological Association promptly denounced the move as a blatant mischaracterization of the field and an effort to needlessly politicize a bastion of social science. Yet that same year, the ASA’s president described sociology to its members as “a form of liberatory praxis” that is “currently undergoing a renaissance as antiracist, decolonial, feminist, queer and transnational theorizing lead us to more inclusive insights.”

Meanwhile, one contingent, Sociologists for Palestine, is boycotting the ASA’s annual conference (theme: “Disrupting the Status Quo”) next month. The reason? The ASA refused to authorize a vote on their own proposed boycott—of Israeli academic institutions. This has drawn a counterpetition and a backlash so fierce, the Chronicle of Higher Education called it a “War for Sociology.”

Already, ASA membership is in steep decline, with membership at 9,400 down from 14,900 at its peak in 1972. 

Now, sociology, long derided by many academics in humanities and the “harder” social sciences for its perceived squishiness, is being criticized from within.

An increasingly vocal group of sociologists say the discipline’s cratering reputation is especially vivid when compared with economics, psychology and political science, all of which can seem more serious and pragmatic—gateways to law school or business school or an advanced degree in healthcare. Whereas those disciplines often use cutting-edge methodologies, sociology seems dusty and theory-laden. Even sociologists acknowledge that students are often drawn to the major because they’re afraid of math or are sold on sociology as a means to activism.

Starting in 2013, the number of students majoring in sociology dropped from 31,000 to 21,000 in 2024. One ZipRecruiter poll found sociology among college grads’ most regretted majors.

It’s tempting to write all this off as another sorry example of academia gone off the rails. But the implications of sociology’s implosion extend well beyond the confines of higher education, driving everything from what kids learn in secondary school, to how workplaces and cultural institutions function (or become dysfunctional), to which ideas inform legislation.

“I Believe in Sociology as a Weapon”

Sociology is in many ways the mother of all social sciences, she who hath birthed dozens of disciplines ranging from criminology to postcolonial studies to ethnic studies. 

Unlike psychology, which operates on an individual level, sociology considers human phenomena in the aggregate and often over the long run. By examining trends in educational attainment, labor force shifts and the effects of social media and AI, it can offer a grand-scale picture of societal health.

With roots dating to 19th century European theorists like Max Weber and Émile Durkheim, sociology coalesced professionally in America during the Progressive Era. Many consider W.E.B. Du Bois the father of American sociology. Though trained as a historian, Du Bois, later a founder of the NAACP, used sociological methods to document the impact of slavery and Jim Crow on Black Americans.

Du Bois’s dual role as both a social scientist and an activist also inspired some of the fiercest debates over sociologists’ role. In 1896, Du Bois defined sociology as “the discovery of truth” and warned that if scholars “dally with the truth to humor the whims of the day” they “hurt the cause of scientific truth the world over.” Traditionally, sociologists interpreted his words as drawing a hard line between studying the truth and acting on it. But sociologists in the scholar-activist mold note that Du Bois also believed in using sociological truth in the pursuit of activism, promising in 1906 to “never cease to protest and assail the ears of America.”

Sociology is fundamentally shaped by who is doing the work, many sociologists argue. Didn’t early sociologists claim to prove white peoples’ supremacy over other races based on supposed empirical evidence? Later research by conservative and neocon sociologists informed policies like broken-window policing, racial profiling, welfare reform and colorblindness. For many contemporary sociologists, steeped in postmodern theory, the insistence that a single truth exists is a fallacy and objectivity itself, a tool of oppression. 

Social phenomena are always shaped by power politics and competing interests, according to Lisa Hajjar, who studies law and conflict with a focus on Israel/Palestine and chairs the department of sociology at UC Santa Barbara, one of the biggest sociology departments in the country. “What I always tell students is that when it comes to the complex world that people live in and make and change, there is no single Archimedean point of truth,” she says. “There are just better and worse ways of presenting information and making arguments.”

According to an increasingly dominant contingent of sociologists, sociologists also need to engage with the public more forcefully. 

“As bodies, we need to speak to the public when we need to interrupt public harm or advocate for the public good,” Saida Grundy, a professor of sociology and African-American and Black diasporic studies at Boston University. She compares the ASA to the American Heart Association, which uses its research and authority to advance messages intended to improve public health, providing guidelines and issuing warnings. Shouldn’t the ASA and its individual members similarly deploy their research to inveigh against injustice and advance social change?

In her view, sociology has an obligation to engage with the world. Sociologists who study immigration, for example, should speak out against ICE. 

“I believe in sociology as a weapon,” Grundy says.

“What if We Just Liquidate the Discipline?”

Other sociologists say the impulse toward activism is compromising not only the aim and use of sociological research, but the quality of the research itself. In lieu of engaging in objective analysis, the discipline is shaping, even bending, the truth.

Critics of the activist-scholar model frequently cite Christian Smith’s 2014 book, “The Sacred Project of American Sociology,” as persuasively diagnosing a discipline increasingly corrupted by what amounts to a quasi-religious activist impulse.

“Sociology’s sacred project champions emancipation, autonomy, equality, justice, inclusion, diversity, open-mindedness, progress, tolerance, and cosmopolitanism,” Smith wrote. “In the end that sacred project actually tends to produce sectarian narrowness, exclusion, uniformity, silencing, self-censorship, lack of debate, the negative sanctioning of nonconformists, and the debilitation of rigorous thought.”

Smith quit the ASA around the same time, demoralized by what he saw as a lack of self-awareness among his colleagues, whose work focused on the world’s wrongs while failing to recognize their own. Professors teach from textbooks he describes as “thinly veiled political progressivism watered down to pathetic mush.” This past January, he resigned from University of Notre Dame, where he was a professor of sociology for 20 years. 

“From my point of view, sociology should be producing intellectuals who think deeply and insightfully about the world,” he says. Instead, he says, it’s producing technicians and activists. “The painfulness of all this is that I believe sociology really matters and makes a contribution. But sociology is heading down the wrong road. Over time, I’ve thought to myself, ‘What if we just liquidate the discipline?’”

During her campaign for the presidency of the ASA this year, Melissa Wilde, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, signed a petition objecting to an ASA vote on Sociologists for Palestine’s proposed boycott. She believes that sociologists, as a body, should remain neutral. 

“While the activists will not be constrained in their activism if the ASA becomes politically neutral, the sociologists who do not want politics mixed into their research would be deeply constrained in their research and its impact if the ASA becomes activist,” she says. (She lost the election.)

To Ilana Redstone, a sociologist who specializes in political polarization at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, sociology’s troubles gained traction through the 1971 Supreme Court decision, Griggs vs. Duke Power Co., which deemed that practices with a disparate impact on employees are illegal. According to her analysis, the moral equation of disparate outcomes with discrimination soon became enshrined within institutions like academia and the media. Underrepresentation or unequal pay among groups served as evidence of bias, she argues, leading to a proliferation of D.E.I. practices, including concepts around unconscious bias, harm and intent.

Within sociology, it meant that any inequality among groups was de facto the result of discrimination, rendering moot other possible theories, Redstone says: “We’re treating questions around causation as settled.” Even suggesting research into alternative sociological explanations is viewed as racist, morally wrong and victim blaming at best.

The consequences are playing out across society. “Once a claim is made that suggests, ‘We are on the right side of history, we are doing the work of good people who care about justice,’ that creates a lot of social pressure,” she says. It forecloses disagreement, she says, “And that has an enormous destructive effect on democracy.”

Redstone’s critique builds on others circulating within the profession. In interviews and on panels convened by organizations like Heterodox Academy, a nonpartisan organization devoted to academic reform, critics say that overt politicization—of research, of teaching, of practice—is killing the discipline. They refer to a discipline in disarray, write papers with titles like “How Sociology Can Save Itself” and blog about “Sociology’s Pervasively Dubious Assumptions.”

They describe an atmosphere in which to get ahead, you must consistently submit to political litmus tests, publish accordingly and pray that you make it to tenure without getting excommunicated. Specializing in a stodgy subject like religion, the military or law enforcement—especially if one has anything positive to say—is as unfashionable as flaunting a fur coat.

In their view, contemporary sociology’s relentless focus on race, gender and class, its emphasis on the need for social change over the benefits of social stability and its obsession with inequality amount to an abdication of scholarly duty, decreasing the value of sociological research, reducing its impact and undermining public trust. (According to one analysis, 80% of articles published in today’s flagship sociology journals touch on inequality.)

This Is What the Field of Sociology Is About.”

This spring, a damning report by Vanderbilt and Washington University called out the social sciences for “a distinctive form of politicization in which the scholarly enterprise is taken to be subordinate to, or in the service of, political (social or moral) goals beyond the advancement of knowledge and understanding.”

“Activist logics are taking over scientific logics,” says Ashley Rubin, the sociologist who worked on the Vanderbilt/Washington University report. 

“If you look at the data on so much of the current research on capitalism, sexism, racism, you’ll see that sociology is misrepresenting the evidence, concealing the evidence or distorting it outright,” says Kevin McCaffree, a sociologist at the University of North Texas. He points to numerous studies purporting to show the pervasiveness of poverty in America, rampant sexism in the hiring of women and the harms inflicted by “microaggressions.” 

“Every day, the goal in my work is to not do politics,” McCaffree says. “My job is to imagine someone in my mind who has the opposite assumptions and go back and forth with them to test my ideas. I don’t think most sociologists realize the magnitude of their own bias and the weakness of the evidence supporting their claims.”

McCaffree and other empiricists accuse scholars of engaging in “asymmetrical analysis,” depending on whether groups are considered “minoritized,” which skews the results. And an emphasis on systems denies groups or individuals within groups any form of agency. He believes sociologists owe it to students and the public to be transparent about these failures, including years of compromised research. 

McCaffree is also the editor of the journal, Theory & Society, a position he took on in 2023 after the publisher fired its previous editor. McCaffree decided to reorient the publication in a more open and rigorous direction. The entire staff promptly resigned. 

“The enforcement of ideological conformity within sociology is so intense it’s impossible to ignore,” he says. “Meanwhile, trust in higher education is collapsing. That’s being driven in part by politicized degrees in social science, and in that respect, sociology is the belly of the beast.”

Jukka Savolainen, a professor of criminology and sociology at Wayne State University, says too much sociological research is a “waste of resources” and a missed opportunity. “Don’t we want to learn about the causes of crime? Do we want to know whether we have Venezuelan gangs in Colorado? Or do we just say, ‘Policing is bad, parole is bad, they destroy communities, cops are bigots and the real problem is police violence.’” 

Musa al-Gharbi, a sociologist at Stony Brook University, tells the story of a professor at Columbia University who assigned the children’s board book, “Anti-Racist Baby,” in an introductory sociology class. She opened up the first class by holding up the book and declaring, “This is what the field of sociology is about.”

What al-Gharbi calls “normie beliefs,” ones that are often true and well-founded, are relentlessly undermined within the discipline: You think religion is good? You think men and women are different? Believe that marriage is stabilizing or that police are necessary? Wrong. In this way and others, he says, professors may unwittingly discourage or alienate students. 

In many sociology classes, he says, society is relentlessly depicted as “bad, bad, bad,” and in ways that offer a less accurate understanding of America. 

“Based on the narrative in sociology, you’d think America is some kind of racist hellscape and that white people are uniquely depraved,” al-Gharbi explains. “In reality, people get along across difference in America better than any other country on the planet.”