Rihanna triggers Christians over 'sexy nun' photoshoot, Catholics ask her to 'do it in a hijab' - "Barbadose-born singer, businesswoman, actress and songwriter Rihanna has attracted the ire of netizens after she posed as a “sexy nun” for the popular American magazine “Interview.” In bold pictures shared online, The ‘Diamonds’ star is dressed in a mock black and white nun’s habit complete with a defined headpiece. However, her top is open revealing a greasy and braless chest with ample cleavage on display as she strikes a provocative pose with bright red lipstick and heavy makeup on her face. She can be seen making suggestive gestures in a subsequent video... Internet personality Oli London slammed the celebrity and accused her of “selling her soul.” He commented, “Would you mock another religion, Rihanna? Would you wear a Hijab and do this? No, you absolutely wouldn’t. So why do you think it’s okay to mock Christians? You sold your soul.”The “Rude Boy” singer was challenged by YouTuber Lauren Chen to do the same while wearing a Hijab... Another individual asked the popstar to replicate the same wearing a hijab in order to encourage religious inclusivity. One user asked, “Don’t you guys get tired of making excuses for disrespecting religious garments,” and questioned if such acts are only permitted against Christianity. Journalist Amy Mek also slammed the singer for being a “hypocrite.” She charged, “Rihanna disrespects Christians and Hindus, yet begs for forgiveness of Muslims.” Notably, this is not the first time, the Grammy Award winner has courted controversy for disrespecting religion. She faced harsh criticism after lingerie models at her fashion show danced to a song that appeared to be a remix of an Islamic Hadith. The incident transpired in 2020 and the global star apologized for utilizing “Doom,” a song by Coucou Chloe which was released in 2016, in her Savage x Fenty fashion presentation... Interestingly, after apologising to Muslims, Rihanna insulted Hindus in 2021 by flaunting a Ganesha necklace as she posed semi-nude, but conveniently ignored to express any apology to the global minority even after she was repeatedly criticised for her derogatory gesture. “While the singer is clearly promoting her new Savage x Fenty line, which just got $115 million in funding, I’m baffled by what made her think it’s OK to appropriate another culture. Rihanna was wearing a necklace of a god, which is incredibly sacred to Hindus. For those who don’t know, Ganesh is a Hindu god who is believed to be the Lord of Beginnings and the Remover of Obstacles. I understand that many outside of the religion may not immediately understand what the big deal is, but once you learn the meaning, it’s easy to see that celebrities truly need to stop using other religious symbols as their aesthetic, because it’s getting old,” Nikita Charuza voiced in ‘PopSugar.’ She further slammed the pop icon in the piece for apologizing to Muslims for insulting their religion but not to Hindus."
Some animals are more equal than others
Meme - "When you out virtue signal the virtue signalers
Tara Xacum: I am complaining on behalf of our Muslim high schoo! students. My son just told me the class breakfasts for Sophomores and Juniors were Monday and Tuesday of this week - during Ramadan. You'd think our district would not be so damn tone deaf!
Rocco Rich: It's pretty abelist to insult by calling people deaf. It's offensive to truly disabled people.
that phrase is abilist and shouldnt be used. Deaf isn't an insult
tara xacum: I hadn't thought of that. I will stop using the phrase "tone deaf" as a way to mean a lack of understanding. I appreciate you calling me out on that. You're correct."
A brief era of rationality is ending - "I have long argued in these columns that the spasm of identity politics through which we have been passing since 2015, the Great Awokening, is a threat to the empirical and rationalist assumptions that underpin the modern world. To harrumph and call it “political correctness gone crazy” is to miss the dreadfulness of the menace. When we argue that lived experience trumps logic, that truth depends on perspective, that people are defined by their sex or color rather than by the validity of their arguments, we are rejecting modernity itself. If that sounds far-fetched, look at the way our culture warriors are turning on the men who made the Enlightenment. David Hume... he wrote that civilization was an essentially white phenomenon, a proposition that we can now see to be false but which, given the technological disparities he observed, was perhaps not such a surprising inference to draw in the 18th century. London’s Natural History Museum is reviewing its collections because Charles Darwin is offensive. The bearded sage thought that biological sex differences were big, saw savages as cruel and wretched rather than noble, and generally believed in the supremacy of Anglo-Saxon civilization. If you think Darwin’s preeminence will save him from the mob, look at the scientists and philosophers who have already been canceled for holding the views of their own age rather than ours: Sir Francis Galton, Sir Ronald Fisher, H. C. Yarrow, and Carl Linnaeus. Voltaire is condemned because he saw Africans as “children,” Immanuel Kant because he ranked the races of the world, with whites at the top and indigenous Americans at the bottom. Even John Locke, the grandfather of liberalism, is condemned for having owned shares in the Royal African Company, which traded in slaves, and because the constitution of Carolina, which he drafted on the orders of others, seems designed to allow for slave-holding. To make an obvious point, we never honored these men because of their views on race, which were incidental to their achievements as scientists and philosophers. To anathematize them now is to condemn the system of thought that they upheld, which is, indeed, the goal of the postmodernist agitators stirring our current discontents. According to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the United States is permeated by “aspects of whiteness” that include “the scientific method,” “objective, rational linear thinking,” and “cause and effect relationships.” Imagine being told that if you are not white, the whole concept of science is alien to you. Here we see, stated openly, the philosophy behind the idea that “lived experience” trumps data and that your physiognomy counts for more than your argument. We have come full circle. Many Enlightenment thinkers were condemned in their own time for challenging religious dogma. Hume was denied a post at Edinburgh in 1742 because of his alleged atheism. Darwin became a hate figure for many congregations. Now, once again, they are howled down for insisting that logic and evidence matter more than comfortable assumptions. The worst of it is that the wokes, like the religious fundamentalists of earlier epochs, probably have the numbers on their side. The Enlightenment happened, in evolutionary terms, an eye-blink ago. We are far more attuned to notions of tribe, hierarchy, and absolute authority than we are to such flimsy concepts as experimentation and empiricism"
Pauline Hanson's legal team tenders video of her telling white senator to 'go back to New Zealand' in discrimination defence - "One Nation leader Pauline Hanson told a white senator to "go back to New Zealand", four years before she tweeted that Australia's first female Muslim senator should "piss off back to Pakistan", a court has heard. The Federal Court has been hearing a racial discrimination case brought by Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi against Senator Hanson over the tweet, which was written in response to a tweet from the Senator Faruqi on the day Queen Elizabeth II died in September 2022. On that day Senator Faruqi tweeted that she could not "mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples"... Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act states that it is unlawful for a person to commit a public act that is reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group based on the race, colour, or ethnic origin of the other person... He said it was incorrect to believe that Senator Faruqi should have to "take it on the chin" because she was a federal politician. "If anything that warrants a greater level of protection," he said, arguing it would otherwise deter other people from diverse backgrounds following in her footsteps... Senator Hanson's barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC had argued that Senator Faruqi's tweet was intended to offend and provoke a response. Senator Hanson's legal team also argued their client's tweet fell within an exemption to the Racial Discrimination Act which allows a fair comment on a matter of public interest if it is an expression of a genuine belief held by the person."
"Minority" politicians must be protected from criticism, because "white fragility" means "minorities" won't go into politics if criticised
Of course, if you offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate a person because he is white, you won't be prosecuted because that is "anti-racism". You will be celebrated instead
Video of Pauline Hanson telling white former senator to 'go back to New Zealand' used in racial discrimination defence : r/australian - "Foreigners: I moved here for a better life, because things at home are so awful.
Australians: OK?
Foreigners: I don't like the way your country works! It must be more like the country I had to leave to have a better life! You must do things my way!
Australians: Fuck off back home then? The way we do things is why you came here!?
Foreigners: OMG Racist!"
Video of Pauline Hanson telling white former senator to 'go back to New Zealand' used in racial discrimination defence : r/australian - "Would love for her to piss off out of the place she finds so stoked in colonialism and the land of thy stolen. If she don't like it then she should fuck off, off of it. I wasn't too keen on the Queen, but I respect The Monarchy, The Commonwealth, and most of all, our Australia. How dare she say that shit on that day."
Video of Pauline Hanson telling white former senator to 'go back to New Zealand' used in racial discrimination defence : r/australian - "I think the point that Hanson is trying to make is that Faruqi is a self serving hypocrite. If she actually believes Australia is "stolen land", her migrating here is participating in the occupation of said stolen land, in fact she's bought multiple properties on that land. So it makes sense that Hanson questions her motives and if she really believes she's occupying stolen land she should do the right thing and leave, because to continue to remain in Australia would make her a hypocritical occupier wouldn't it? How can you both believe Australia is stolen land and at the same time think its morally acceptable to migrate here and participate
in the of theft via profiting from owning multiple properties? If Faruqi believed in what she preached she would return to Pakistan where she is indigenous to."
Reflections on Solzhenitsyn's Harvard Address - "It is now painfully clear that, as Solzhenitsyn was able to discern 42 years ago, the West has been gradually losing the will and intellectual ability to defend itself, not so much against foreign armies as it may have appeared in 1978, but against an army of internal critics determined to demolish everything the West used to stand for... A lot has been written lately about the Woke phenomenon, with excellent accounts of its ideology, genesis, and, though not yet complete, its long march through the institutions. But I have still found myself at a loss to understand how this simplistic, tribalist, intellectually confused, petty, and terribly divisive ideology appears on the verge of displacing our old, magnificent worldview, anchored in the universal “unalienable Rights endowed by our Creator and secured by the Laws of Nature.” I wrote this essay in the hope that revisiting what Solzhenitsyn had to say in 1978 may provide a clue to why we find ourselves so vulnerable today. I take from his text two important themes which I believe are relevant for this task. One is the growing imbalance between rights and individual obligations, the second is the loss of faith... The imbalance between rights and obligations in Western societies is constantly growing as the common understanding of rights is expanding, thus strongly undermining any remaining notions of individual obligations. The Left includes among what it calls “human rights” not only those guaranteed by the Constitution but also the rights to free health care, free education, free child care, the right to unrestricted and free abortions, and makes constant political demands in their name. Recently, one hears voices calling for a guaranteed “Universal Basic Income’’ as another human right. Whatever one thinks about the merits of these new rights, when put into practice through vast bureaucratic programs, they reduce personal responsibility and increase the power of the state. One may also ask whether there is any possible limit to this expansion? In Communist countries everybody had the right to work, guaranteed by the state, viewed as the most fundamental human right. In practice, it meant that everybody who was not penalized by the Party could get a wretched job with little hope for advancement. The state could implement such a policy because it controlled all the means of production. Are we heading in the same direction? This imbalance between rights and responsibilities is not only restricted to individuals, it is also affecting our governmental, societal, and cultural institutions. In a series of lectures at Princeton University two years ago, Yuval Levin decried how these institutions are neglecting their formative responsibilities in favor of performative actions. He provides a thorough analysis of how congressmen, journalists, judges, and university professors prefer to behave, often to the detriment of the institutions they represent, as independent actors on the larger stage provided by the irrepressible, omnipresent, and vastly irresponsible media. The result is an accelerating lack of trust in the institutions they represent and a decline of social capital, which is essential to the health of the republic. But it is not just that our basic institutions are declining by neglecting their essential responsibilities. Far more worrying is the fact that the liberal ideas underpinning these institutions are themselves collapsing under a constant barrage of criticism. In other words, people are losing faith in our foundational liberal values. This fact, barely visible in 1978, is an essential part of the present reality of Wokeness... Marxism has from its inception been very good at detecting and criticizing some of the more obvious deficiencies of capitalism—yet, as we know, terrible at offering any workable solutions. Marxists were obsessed with taking power, and whenever they did, by insurrection or conquest, their rule descended rapidly into some awful form of totalitarianism. But with the exception of the underdeveloped Russia, and later China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Cuba, capitalism turned out to be more enduring than the original Marxists envisioned, partly because of its remarkable ability to adapt and reform itself within the cultural traditions and democratic institutions that sit alongside it. That led to a new form of criticism, cultural Marxism, initiated by Gramsci, directed at the “hegemonic culture” through which capitalism maintains its power. The intense focus on criticizing all aspects of Western societies with the ultimate aim of weakening and eventually destroying them was continued by the Frankfurt School, under the name of Critical Theory, and brought to the US where it found a niche in American colleges and universities and from where it soon started its long march through America’s institutions... Take any possible identity group and you can find a critical theory dedicated to it... Critical pedagogy theory (CPT) criticizes the traditional relationship between teacher and student which, apparently, is like the relationship between a colonizer and the colonized. These theories provide road maps for liberation from the oppressive, dominant power structures. They are also connected to each other by the doctrine of intersectionality... Add to this a contempt for capitalism, an apocalyptic vision of climate change, and the neat trick of combining moral relativism in theory with a large dose of moral absolutism in practice, and you get the main contours of the so-called Woke phenomenon... Solzhenitsyn points out that humanism, divorced from its religious roots, is no match for the current materialism of the Left. In the same spirit as Hazony, he observes: 'Liberalism was inevitably displaced by radicalism; radicalism had to surrender to socialism; and socialism could never resist communism.'... Spiritual aspirations, manifested through organized religion, can also lead to cancellations of freedoms and terrible conflicts. The absence of religion, however, may be even more problematic, as people tend to fill the vacuum created by the disappearance of old religions with new ones, which are often more fanatical and are not constrained by fidelity to ancient, inspiring texts or anchored in tradition. Many observers have pointed out that the Woke phenomenon represents a new, postmodern religion... the philosophical conceit of modern rationalist thinkers, starting with Descartes, that truth ought to be discoverable by reason alone, has led instead to the opposite conclusion embodied in the radical relativism of postmodern thinkers such as Foucault and Derrida."
Antiracism, Anti-Semitism, and the False Problem of Jewish Success - "the New York Times published an op-ed celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Million Man March that neglected to mention the anti-Semitic history of its organizer, Louis Farrakhan. In response, former Times editorial board member Bari Weiss tweeted that the institution had adopted “a worldview in which Jew hate does not count.” The author of the Times op-ed, Howard University professor Natalie Hopkinson, replied that “ppl who have become white”—that is, Jews like Weiss—“should not be lecturing Black ppl about oppression.” Exposing and objecting to racial disparities became the purpose of the New York Times around August 2019, when executive editor Dean Baquet called a town hall meeting attended by the paper’s staff. He announced that, with the Mueller probe winding down, the paper needed to “regroup, and shift resources and emphasis” from Russiagate to the story of “race and class” and “what it means to be an American.” A few months later, the Times published “The 1619 Project” which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, and the paper’s editorial and ideological focus has been consistent ever since. When Weiss left the Times in July 2020, she published a resignation letter on her blog in which she claimed that management indifference to harassment from progressive staffers had created an intolerable work environment. She has since argued that progressive ideology is increasingly hostile to Jews and other successful minorities because they undermine the narrative of systemic racism pushed by antiracist activists. Jews came to America, often as refugees fleeing persecution, and were able to flourish here precisely because opportunities weren’t closed off to them on the basis of identity. The story of minority immigrant success is inconsistent with the progressive narrative of the United States as a country founded upon and organized around racism. If it is true that oppressed groups have had historically unprecedented access to opportunity in modern, liberal societies then it cannot also be true that pervasive oppression explains lingering disparities. So progressives have become hostile to successful minorities, and have begun speaking about them in ways that echo the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of the far-Right... For much of the last century, the liberal position on race in America was that we should eliminate discrimination and prejudice, treat everyone as an individual, and award opportunities on the basis of merit. Some groups, like Jews, Asian Americans, and other minority immigrant groups have flourished under this system, but black Americans continue to be represented in fractions of their societal proportions in many elite settings. In response, the progressive view has evolved. Today it holds that treating everyone the same without regard to race is actually racist because it fails to consider the impact of historic and systemic discrimination. In this way, systemic racism is preserved by judging members of historically marginalized groups as less worthy according to ostensibly race-neutral criteria (for instance, test scores)... To Kendi’s right, intellectuals like Jordan Peterson have offered a simple explanation for the disproportionate number of Jews in the upper echelons of various fields: There are a disproportionate number of very smart Jews. However, when New York Times columnist Bret Stephens argued in 2019 that Jewish success was mostly attributable to Jewish culture, values, and norms, he was denounced as a eugenicist. Even the empirical claim that high intelligence is unusually common among Jews was blasted in American Scientist as racist pseudoscience. If it is racist pseudoscience to suggest that Jewish families and communities are unusually adept at cultivating talent, then what explanation remains for Jews’ disproportionate success? On Twitter, Kendi has said that: “The only people who believe equality of outcome between racial GROUPS will never exist are the people who refuse to recognize that racist policy are behind the inequality of outcome between racial GROUPS.” In other words, if Jews are successful it is because they have shaped policy to benefit themselves at the expense of other groups. This is how Kendi and his antiracist disciples arrive—like the white nationalists before them—at the “JQ.” If we dismiss Jewish talent and culture as explanations for Jewish success then the only explanation left is that Jewish success is the result of Jewish mendacity... Whether you believe that power and wealth ought to be redistributed to create a white ethnostate or you want to reallocate power and wealth to facilitate equity by imposing antiracist policy, the road to your imagined utopia runs through or perhaps over the Jews. Kendi rarely discusses the implications of his “antiracist policies” on groups other than blacks and whites... many progressives seem to believe that white supremacy can be dismantled without examining minority success if we simply fold successful minorities into the overarching category of whiteness. You don’t have to deal with the Jewish Question if you don’t acknowledge that Jews exist... Some Jews may consider themselves to be white people with white privilege who benefit from white supremacy, but that is unlikely to impress those on the radical Left and radical Right who dislike Jews for ideological reasons of their own. Progressives may try to define whiteness in a way that elides the existence of Jews, but theoretical jargon cannot alter reality. Jews still exist, and bigots still want to disappear us, and some of those bigots are pursuing their agendas under the guise of virtuous antiracism. Furthermore, when you dismantle a system that apportions opportunities to individuals on the basis of merit alone and replace it with a system that distributes those opportunities proportionately to groups in order to create equity, people will reconstruct their identities in order to qualify for benefits under the new system... a wildly disproportionate share of black students who gain admission to elite colleges are from immigrant backgrounds... And of course the success of Asian Americans remains a problem for the equity project... The unintended similarities between the memes produced by the alt-Right and the graphics produced by the New York Times expose the unexplored similarities between the ideologies and political missions of these two ostensibly opposed movements. Both ends of the political horseshoe are suspicious of Jews, along with Asian Americans and other successful minority groups. Antiracism went off the rails when its intellectual leaders decided they could use racial discrimination for positive purposes. That has evolved into the view, articulated by Kendi, that opposing discrimination is actually the real racist position."
Confessions of an Equity-Industry Propagandist - "It’s a shakedown, and some of the biggest and most prestigious organizations in the world are signing up. The people who do this work are kind and intelligent people. So are the people who buy it. But that almost makes it worse. It’s all about the money, a circle jerk just as corrupt, disingenuous and ego-riddled as the capitalist and institutional behemoths getting hustled. Except no corporation or government—in the West, anyway—perches atop its hoard while also claiming absolute moral authority and demonizing anyone who questions it. In college, we used to watch The Smurfs, and take a swig whenever we heard ‘smurf’ used as verb, noun or adjective. I’d have gotten drunk just as smurfin’ fast if I’d hauled on a bottle every time an equity consultant used the word ‘folks’ (spelled with an x for inclusivity) to enforce yet another radical over-correction and have it feel less threatening. Other popular favorites: “Do better” (as a critique of others’ insufficiently activist outlook), “Be in the circle” (an affectation of Indigenous rituals), “Shift the power,” “Stay in relationship to the work,” and the archvillain: “whiteness.” In the past few years, the phenomenon has escalated dramatically. I began to pull further and further away from what had started to feel like a soft-edged cult complete with chants, conspiracies and near-complete homogeneity of speech. Every client echoed the last, parroting rightspeak... It’s one thing to write ad copy urging people to drink Pepsi instead of Coke. That’s benign. But I was being paid to mangle language, gaslight the public, and undo the fabric of things I believe in—free speech, open discourse, and the toxicity of narcissism as a cultural north star. That’s malignant... “You know what I’m going to ask, right?” my client whispered. “Please make this room look diverse, or else we can’t use it.” Most attendees, despite being overwhelmingly white, seemed energetic and eager to participate in the training. But that was not enough. I passed the instruction to the photographer to shadow the “desirable” people of color, only some of whom were smiling and engaged. The photographer lurked obediently in their periphery. The others were bored and expressionless, which makes sense: Like me, they were regular people doing their jobs. Someone had made them come to equity training. They did not exist to be diversity models. And there we were, salivating over their presumed oppression like some sort of delicacy. Professional “change-makers” are so fixated on virtue signaling, the simple act of choosing an idea, interview, feature story, photo, or retweet is a minefield. For another client, I pitched that we highlight the work of a woman who does event facilitation on environmental issues. “Hmmm,” said the client, who happened to be white. “I dunno. She’s just… way too white.” No one in our entire state could possibly be more correctly oriented than this environmentalist. She wears vegan shoes and stands in the cold for reparations. Venting, I described her to my partner (the recipient of all my eye-rolling GIFs) as: No way that woman doesn’t do a land acknowledgement before she burps. But her deeply earnest commitment to fighting injustice was undeserving of credit because she has long blonde hair... For wokepreneurs, the more boxes ticked, the better—even when it’s fake. One client, a political candidate who’d recently moved to a rural area, bussed in a carload of hijab-wearing women from the closest city so the small town would look “less white,” and to lend urgency to her insistence that its citizens be “more race-aware.” The candidate was not successful in her bid to win the county’s seat, losing the election by a wide margin. Her campaign had profoundly misread and scolded the very people she had hoped to represent. The movement—progressivism, equity, wokeness—protects itself from examination by pointing at anyone who does not uncritically accede to its doctrines as evidence of the problem it claims to be solving. As a former progressive, this makes me angry. I first hit peak-intersectionalism thanks to the revelations of my young lesbian niece, including gender ideology’s effect on her socialization and mental health. After years of witnessing the movement from the inside, I began seeking nuance, as I should have done from the start. I haven’t been able to say any of this publicly, which is why I’ve written this piece under a pseudonym. If I spoke out about any of this, I’d jeopardize my career. So I am quietly and selectively withdrawing my talent. I am a conscientious objector... It’s almost impossible for anyone to feel valued from inside the equity hustle, or to trust its means or its ends. White people—especially straight “cis” men—are required to perform contrition, self-censorship and self-deprecation. Everyone else is tokenized and graded according to their intersectional score first, and the value of their contribution second. It should make all of us step back, skeptical. But it doesn’t. Not when this much money is up for grabs."
Dad who refuses to send son to school over LGBT lessons is facing jail - "A dad who has kept his son off school for months in a dispute over LGBT+ equality lessons has refused to back down despite authorities taking him to court. Jabar ‘Jay’ Hussain, 51, faces a maximum £2,500 fine – and potentially a three-month jail sentence – for failing to ensure his nine-year-old attended Parkfield Community School in Alum Rock, Birmingham. Mr Hussain has instructed lawyers to seek a judicial review over the issue if Birmingham City Council did not stop the prosecution, claiming the school’s No Outsiders equality programme was ‘incompatible’ with his rights and Muslim faith. He alleged the lessons posed a ‘safeguarding risk’ and caused confusion for young pupils about their gender identity; and that the decision to prosecute him was unlawful and breached his human rights."
Candice Wiggins: I was bullied for being straight in '98% gay' WNBA - "“Me being heterosexual and straight, and being vocal in my identity as a straight woman was huge,” Wiggins told the Union-Tribune. “I would say 98% of the women in the WNBA are gay women. It was a conformist type of place. There was a whole different set of rules they [the other players] could apply. “There was a lot of jealousy and competition, and we’re all fighting for crumbs,” Wiggins added. “The way I looked, the way I played – those things contributed to the tension. “People were deliberately trying to hurt me all of the time. I had never been called the B-word so many times in my life than I was in my rookie season. I’d never been thrown to the ground so much. The message was: ‘We want you to know we don’t like you.’” “It comes to a point where you get compared so much to the men, you come to mirror the men,” she said. “So many people think you have to look like a man, play like a man to get respect. I was the opposite. I was proud to a be a woman, and it didn’t fit well in that culture.”... “Nobody cares about the WNBA,” Wiggins said. “Viewership is minimal. Ticket sales are very low. They give away tickets and people don’t come to the game.”"
Clearly, heterophobia is a homophobic myth
