Links - 29th April 2024 (2 - Trans Mania: JK Rowling)

Meme - *Sorting Hat* "MALE"

Meme - "MEANWHILE IN SCOTLAND."
Cloaked Figure: "DEGENDORS!"
Degendor: "SAY MY PRONOUNS. SAY IIIITTT"
JK Rowling: "Terfecto Obliteratum!"
Degendor: "SKREEEEEEE"

Meme - J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling: "Deeply amused by those telling me I've lost their admiration due to the disrespect I show violent, duplicitous rapists. I shall file your lost admiration carefully in the box where I keep my missing fucks."

Meme - "So you are saying you regret a decision you made to permanently alter your body when you were younger?"
Dani @ashatteredyouth: "Harry potter was my childhood. I loved it so much I sleeved out my whole arm around 2012. Im honestly embarassed about it now. Fuck jk rowling, fuck your terf game, and fuck your excuses "allies""

Meme - J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling: "This is the bottom line of every single activist I’ve ever engaged with on this issue, but rarely have I seen it stated so honestly. ‘Why can’t you just believe, it’s so weird you care, why make this complicated, just accept the slogan.’"
"That's a whole lotta words and quite frankly I'm not fucking reading all that. I just wanted to say that it's weirder to do all this instead of just believing that trans women are women. Seriously, at this point which sounds more insane to the average person?"
JK Rowling: "You've asked me several questions on this thread and accused me of avoiding answering, so here goes. I believe a woman is a human being who belongs to the sex class that produces large gametes. It's irrelevant whether or not her gametes have ever been fertilised, whether or not..."
"So ONLY equipment makes one woman? That seems a very narrow view of what makes a person a woman. What if you have female equipment but never have children..are you still a woman? Is it JUST having the equipment or must you use it? What if you have both sets of equipment?"
Victoria Smith @glosswitch: "Cannot believe I read all of Andrea Long Chu's sodding book when the other side gets to respond to one tweet with "I'm not fucking reading all that""
J.K. Rowling @jk_rowling: "I read Long Chu, Serrano, Tobia, Dawson, Butler, Fausto-Sterling, plus innumerable blogs and articles by the trans-identified and genderists, and I'm still told daily to educate myself by people who insist avocado trees prove a woman can have a penis."
The parallels with religion are clear

Devon Eriksen on X - "It's been kind of amusing, from a distance, to watch @jk_rowling  melt down over men in dresses invading women's private spaces.   She still doesn't get it.   She doesn't understand that first they came for the men. Only then, much later, did they come for the women.   She doesn't understand that "transwomen" are simply doing to women what feminists did to men decades earlier.   First feminists demanded inclusion in men's private, unisex environments. Then they demanded that those spaces be changed to suit them. Then they demanded that no male-only space exist, anywhere.   And the cosmic irony of all of this is that this is a large part of the reason why "transwomen" exist in the first place.   Boys raised without any spaces or groups for boys. Raised without any acknowledgement, or accommodation, for the sex-specific needs of boys. Boys raised solely by women, in environments designed for girls, treated as defective girls, medicated into insensibility with modified methamphetamine if they dare to act like boys. And then told, from an age far too young for psychological self-defense, that men are responsible for all the world's ills, and girls are wonderful and can do no wrong, and can do everything they can do, backwards and in heels.   And still Rowling is surprised when some of them grow up wanting to be girls, and move into the women-only spaces, which were never abolished when the men-only spaces were?   She was smart enough to write a really good series of children's books, but not smart enough to understand the high-order consequences of her own ideology.  It's so incredibly, mind-bendingly delicious to watch. This feminist apocalypse is the result of a chain of events that feminists themselves set in motion, using the same tactics and arguments against them that they used against men.
They are being punished not only for their sins, but by their sins.
This would all be great except for the niggling little detail that not all women are feminists. There are a great many women who never went along with the insanity, but are nevertheless being hit just as hard by the effects.   That's not so funny.   Worse yet, men have very little incentive to lift a finger to help them, since almost no one, man or woman, did a thing for them when they were little boys being attacked from every angle by adult feminists.   If you make women into a privileged class...  If you make women's preferences into your society's moral standards...  If you tilt the playing field for the express purpose of making women exceed men in every measure of health, wealth, and social respect...  If you strip your society's art and culture of any image or aspect of positive masculinity...  Then men will grow up wanting to be women."

Meme - J.K. Rowling: "Then I can only conclude that the overwhelming majority of women I encounter, online and off, are thoroughly indecent."
"You don't speak for decent women."

Meme - JK Rowling: "Yep. I'm still amazed all three of our kids chose to gestate inside me, because I thought it was 50/50 they'd come to term inside one of Neil's testicles. By coincidence, my father never gave birth out of his balls, either. Random luck or ancestral curse? I doubt we'll ever know."
"Theres no real importance of biological sex since most people haven't karotyped their chromosomes."

J.K. Rowling on X - "That thing only evil, nasty bigots claim happens, and that never, ever happens, has happened. Again."
Paedophile secretly filmed women in public toilet and sexually assaulted tourist on Durham city bridge - "A paedophile who filmed women in public toilets and sexually assaulted a tourist on a bridge has been locked up.  Kurtis Mawson was spotted inside female toilets near the Odeon at Millburngate shopping centre in Durham city. The 22-year-old was inside a closed cubicle and was standing on the toilet looking into the next cubicle... Liam O'Brien, prosecuting, told the court how Mawson was still inside the toilet cubicle when police arrived and an officer asked if anybody was in there. In an attempt to conceal his identity, Mawson put on a high pitched voice and answering "Yeah".  The prosecutor said one of the officers climbed on top of a toilet to continue a conversation with him. He said: "When challenged with what he is doing in a women's toilet he said: 'Just chilling'. He then said he was there as he identified as female."  When police arrested him, they found him in possession of a mobile phone and a digital camera. He had recorded material of women using the toilet."
You're not allowed to challenge trans self-identification, but of course, convicted criminals can never be true trans people

Thread by @jk_rowling on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Scotland's Hate Crime Act comes into effect today. Women gain no additional protections, of course, but well-known trans activist Beth Douglas, darling of prominent Scottish politicians, falls within a protected category. Phew! Lovely Scottish lass and convicted double rapist Isla Bryson found her true authentic female self shortly before she was due to be sentenced. Misgendering is hate, so respect Isla’s pronouns, please. Love the leggings! Fragile flower Katie Dolatowski, 6'5", was rightly sent to a women's prison in Scotland after conviction. This ensured she was protected from violent, predatory men (unlike the 10-year-old girl Katie sexually assaulted in a women's public bathroom.) Samantha Norris was cleared of exposing her penis to two 11-year-old girls. Hooray! Unfortunately she was then convicted for possession of 16,000 images of children being raped and sexually assaulted. Be that as it may, Sam’s still a lady to me! Scottish woman and butcher Amy George abducted an 11-year-old girl while dressed in female clothing. No idea why this was mentioned in court – of course she was wearing women’s clothing, she's a woman! Amy took the girl home and sexually abused her over a 27-hour period.
But most women aren’t axe-toters or sex offenders, so let’s talk role models! Guilia Valentino (in red) wanted to play on the women's team 'because of sisterhood, validation and political visibility'. Naturally, she was given some boring cis girl’s place. Yay for inclusion! Mridul Wadhwa, head of a Scottish rape crisis centre, says, ‘sexual violence happens to bigoted people as well.’ She has no gender recognition certificate, but was still appointed to a job advertised for women only. Time to be ‘challenged on your prejudices’, rape victims! Munroe Bergdorf isn’t just a pretty face! Public campaigner for a children’s charity until safeguarding concerns were raised, she was appointed UN Women’s first ever UK champion. ‘What makes a woman “a woman” has no definitive answer,’ says Munroe. Great choice, UN Women!  Katie Neeves has been appointed as the UN Women UK delegate. She switched from straight man to lesbian at the age of 48 and, in a leaked 2022 webinar, described how she used to enjoy stealing and wearing her sister’s underwear. A truly relatable representative! Last, but least, TV’s India Willoughby proves we women can call a black broadcaster a ‘nasty bitch’ who ‘wouldn’t be anywhere without woke’, dub lesbians men, insult the looks of a female Olympic swimmer, ‘joke’ about kidnapping feminists, and STILL get airtime! What a gal!
🎉🌼🌸April Fools! 🌸🌼🎉  Only kidding. Obviously, the people mentioned in the above tweets aren't women at all, but men, every last one of them.
In passing the Scottish Hate Crime Act, Scottish lawmakers seem to have placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls. The new legislation is wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women's and girls’ single-sex spaces, the nonsense made of crime data if violent and sexual assaults committed by men are recorded as female crimes, the grotesque unfairness of allowing males to compete in female sports, the injustice of women’s jobs, honours and opportunities being taken by trans-identified men, and the reality and immutability of biological sex.  For several years now, Scottish women have been pressured by their government and members of the police force to deny the evidence of their eyes and ears, repudiate biological facts and embrace a neo-religious concept of gender that is unprovable and untestable. The re-definition of 'woman' to include every man who declares himself one has already had serious consequences for women's and girls’ rights and safety in Scotland, with the strongest impact felt, as ever, by the most vulnerable, including female prisoners and rape survivors.  It is impossible to accurately describe or tackle the reality of violence and sexual violence committed against women and girls, or address the current assault on women’s and girls’ rights, unless we are allowed to call a man a man. Freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal.
I'm currently out of the country, but if what I've written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.  If you agree with the views set out in this tweet, please retweet it.  #ArrestMe #AprilFools #HateCrimeActScotland
Wow. @IndiaWilloughby calling everyone on the list a sex offender, excluding only himself, was the twist I didn't see coming."

The Rabbit Hole on X - "“JK Rowling could be arrested in Scotland for making a series of posts misgendering transgender women, under a newly-enacted hate crime law, a politician in the UK has warned.” The trans stuff is concerning for two major reasons:
1) Targeting of children
2) Free Speech Infringements
Hate Crime legislation is merely a socially acceptable way to brand censorship. Now that reality is on the chopping block, maybe people will wake up."

JK Rowling hate law posts not criminal, police say - ""I hope every woman in Scotland who wishes to speak up for the reality and importance of biological sex will be reassured by this announcement, and I trust that all women - irrespective of profile or financial means - will be treated equally under the law.  "If they go after any woman for simply calling a man a man, I'll repeat that woman's words and they can charge us both at once."... Prime Minister Rishi Sunak earlier backed Ms Rowling's stance stating the UK had a proud tradition of free speech."

Online Troll Forced To Apologize To JK Rowling After Author Threatens Legal Action (2023) - "An online troll was forced to apologize to J.K. Rowling after the author threatened legal action over a since-deleted tweet that likened her to a “Nazi.” Twitter user JJ Welles, who describes himself as a drag queen and jazz hands enthusiast in his bio, apologized to Rowling on Monday after the author threatened legal action in Dec. 2022."
Meme (2024) - JJ Welles @jjwelles_: "I think *that* woman should do the world a favour and take a nice hot bath... with a plugged in electrical appliance of her choosing."
Konoslav 🔺 on X - "It's very strange how these activists who call for tolerance are incredibly prone to violence. Weird..."
He quickly got suspended on X. This is why the left hate Elon Musk so much

Journalists Against Free Speech

From 2019. Things have only gotten worse since:

Journalists Against Free Speech

"Suppose you’re the editorial-page editor of a college newspaper, contemplating the big news on campus: protesters have silenced an invited speaker and gone on a violent rampage. Should you, as a journalist whose profession depends on the First Amendment, write an editorial reaffirming the right to free speech?

If that seems like a no-brainer, you’re behind the times. The question stumped the staff of the Middlebury Campus after protesters silenced conservative social thinker Charles Murray and injured the professor who’d invited him. The prospect of taking a stand on the First Amendment was so daunting that the paper dispensed with its usual weekly editorial, devoting the space instead to a range of opinions from others—most of whom defended the protesters. When a larger and more violent mob at the University of California at Berkeley prevented Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking on campus, students at the Daily Californian did write a forceful editorial—but not in favor of his right to speak. Instead, they reviled Yiannopoulos and denounced those who “invited chaos” by offering a platform to “someone who never belonged here.”

Free speech is no longer sacred among young journalists who have absorbed the campus lessons about “hate speech”—defined more and more broadly—and they’re breaking long-standing taboos as they bring “cancel culture” into professional newsrooms. They’re not yet in charge, but many of their editors are reacting like beleaguered college presidents, terrified of seeming insufficiently “woke.” Most professional journalists, young and old, still pay lip service to the First Amendment, and they certainly believe that it protects their work, but they’re increasingly eager for others to be “de-platformed” or “no-platformed,” as today’s censors like to put it—effectively silenced.

These mostly younger progressive journalists lead campaigns to get conservative journalists fired, banned from Twitter, and “de-monetized” on YouTube. They don’t burn books, but they’ve successfully pressured Amazon to stop selling titles that they deem offensive. They encourage advertising boycotts designed to put ideological rivals out of business. They’re loath to report forthrightly on left-wing censorship and violence, even when fellow journalists get attacked. They equate conservatives’ speech with violence and rationalize leftists’ actual violence as . . . speech.

It’s a strange new world for those who remember liberal journalists like Nat Hentoff, the Village Voice writer who stood with the ACLU in defending the free-speech rights of Nazis, Klansmen, and others whose views he deplored—or who recall the days when the Columbia Journalism Review stood as an unswerving advocate for press freedom. While America has seen its share of politicians eager to limit speech, from John Adams and Woodrow Wilson (who both had journalists prosecuted for “sedition”) to Donald Trump (who has made various unconstitutional threats), journalists on the left and the right have long shared a reverence for the First Amendment, if only out of self-interest. When liberals supported campaign-finance laws restricting corporations’ political messages during election campaigns, they insisted on exemptions for news organizations. One could fault them for being self-serving in this selective censorship, which the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in its Citizens United decision, but at least they stood up for their profession’s freedom.

Today, though, journalists are becoming zealous to silence their ideological rivals—and the fervor is mainly on the left. During the 1960s, the left-wing activists leading Berkeley’s Free Speech movement fought for the rights of conservatives to speak on campus, but today’s activists embrace the New Left’s intellectual rationalizations for censorship. To justify the protection of an ever-expanding array of victimized groups, theorists of intersectionality—the idea that subgroup identities, such as race, gender, and sexuality, overlap to make people more oppressed—have adapted Herbert Marcuse’s neo-Marxist notion of “repressive tolerance.” Marcuse propounded that Orwellian oxymoron in the 1960s to justify government censorship of right-wing groups that were supposedly oppressing the powerless.

Greg Lukianoff, who has fought free-speech wars on campus for two decades as the head of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), dates the ascendancy of the new censors to 2013, when student protesters at Brown University forced the cancellation of a speech by Raymond Kelly, the New York City police commissioner. “For the first time, rather than being ashamed of this assault on free speech, most people on campus seemed to rally around the protesters,” says Lukianoff, coauthor of The Coddling of the American Mind. “That’s when we started hearing the language of medicalization, that free speech would cause medical harm. Outsiders dismissed this as a college phenomenon and predicted that these intolerant fragile kids would have to change when they hit the real world. But instead, they’re changing the world.”

This change can be seen at the once-stalwart ACLU, which has retreated to a new policy of rejecting First Amendment cases when the speech in question “can inflict serious harms” on “marginalized communities.” That’s the paternalistic rationale for campus speech codes, which have repeatedly been declared unconstitutional but remain popular, especially among Democrats and young people. In a national survey in 2017 by the Cato Institute, a majority of Democrats (versus a quarter of Republicans) said that the government should prohibit hate speech, and 60 percent of respondents under age 30 agreed that hate speech constitutes an act of violence...

“Campus newspapers, especially at elite institutions, have become increasingly sympathetic to the notion that speech isn’t protected if it makes students feel unsafe. And now you’re seeing these graduates going into professional journalism and demanding that their editors provide a safe workplace by not employing people whose views make them uncomfortable.”

The result is what Dean Baquet, the New York Times executive editor, recently called a “generational divide” in newsrooms. The progressive activism of younger journalists often leaves their older colleagues exasperated. “The paper is now written by 25-year-old gender studies majors,” said one Washington Post veteran. She wouldn’t speak for the record, though: as fragile and marginalized as these young progressives claim to be, they know how to make life miserable for unwoke colleagues.

If their publication is considering hiring a conservative, or if a colleague writes or tweets something that offends them, young progressives express their outrage on social media—sometimes publicly on Twitter, sometimes in internal chat rooms. The internal chat is supposed to be confidential, but comments often get leaked, stoking online outrage. It takes remarkably little to start the cycle, as Times opinion writer Bari Weiss discovered last year. Weiss, already in disfavor among progressives for criticizing aspects of the #MeToo movement, got into trouble for celebrating the Olympic performance of gymnast Mirai Nagasu, the American-born daughter of Japanese immigrants. Weiss adapted a line from the Hamilton musical to tweet: “Immigrants: They get the job done.” Weiss was promptly attacked for describing Nagasu as an immigrant, making her guilty of a progressive offense known as “othering.”...

“I am being told that I am a racist, a ghoul and that I deserve to die. So I deleted the tweet. That’s where we are.”

Ian Buruma, the editor of The New York Review of Books, was fired for publishing an article by a man accused of sexual assault (a Canadian journalist who’d been acquitted of the charges in court but saw his career ruined). Buruma was doomed by online outrage, a staff revolt, and threats from university presses to withdraw advertising. Harper’s was similarly roiled by internal rebellion and online fury for publishing articles by John Hockenberry, the NPR host who lost his job over sexual harassment accusations, and by Katie Roiphe, whose criticism of #MeToo was controversial even before the magazine published it. Rumors about the pending article prompted Nicole Cliffe, a columnist at Slate, to call for freelance writers to boycott Harper’s unless it killed Roiphe’s piece; Cliffe even offered to compensate them for any money they lost by withdrawing their articles. Her preemptive strike didn’t stop publication of the Roiphe article, but it did inspire at least one company to withdraw an ad from Harper’s.

The Atlantic faced a campaign to fire Kevin Williamson shortly after he was hired away from National Review... The Atlantic initially stood by him, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, one of its star progressive writers, even praised Williamson’s work and said that he’d advised hiring him. But the online dragging and internal discontent soon led to his exit. At a staff meeting (a video of which was leaked to HuffPost) after Williamson’s firing, Coates apologized to his colleagues. “I feel like I kind of failed you guys,” he said.

The online outrage against Williamson was fanned by Media Matters for America, the nonprofit that employs dozens of researchers to dig up damaging material on conservatives—or, at least, material that will sound especially bad if it’s quoted without context... One Media Matters researcher, heroically profiled in the Washington Post, spent ten hours a day listening to recordings from 2006 to 2011 of Tucker Carlson’s conversations with Bubba the Love Sponge, a shock-jock radio host... The campaign succeeded in pressuring advertisers like Land Rover and IHOP to abandon the program, which runs fewer commercials than it did last year.

It’s easy to see why progressive activists have made advertising boycotts one of their chief weapons against Fox, Breitbart, and other conservative outlets. What’s harder to fathom is why so many journalists have cheered a tactic that’s bad for their profession. This kind of boycott is different from the traditional ones against companies accused of bad behavior like mistreating their workers or polluting the environment. In this case, companies are targeted not for the way they run their businesses but simply for advertising their wares. Jack Shafer, the longtime media critic, has been a lonely libertarian voice warning of the threat that this poses to journalism and public discourse. “I barely trust IHOP to make my breakfast,” he wrote in Politico. “Why would I expect it to vet my cable news content for me?”

Journalists have traditionally prided themselves on their independence from advertisers. Now the boycotters want to end that independence. If advertisers start being held accountable for content, their aversion to controversy will put pressure on media companies to churn out bland fare that won’t risk offending anyone. “It’s easy to imagine today’s boycotts turning into tomorrow’s blacklist,” wrote Shafer.

Instead of worrying about this threat to their autonomy, journalists at progressive and mainstream publications have promoted it... Margaret Sullivan, the Washington Post’s media columnist, acknowledged that there might be a problem if boycotters aimed at a provocative outlet like Gawker—a left-leaning site that meets her approval—but she couldn’t bring herself to condemn the tactic. Quite the reverse: “To those who sympathize with Sleeping Giants’ objections to online racism, sexism and hate-mongering—count me in this number—their efforts seem worthwhile, sometimes even noble.”

Other journalists have explicitly endorsed the Carlson boycott, including Kevin Drum of Mother Jones, and Michelangelo Signorile of HuffPost. Some have even pitched in to pressure the advertisers directly...

Other HuffPost reporters used similar tactics against Daryush Valizadeh, known as Roosh, a male critic of feminism who ran a website called Return of Kings. After the reporters “reached out” to Amazon, YouTube, and other companies that enabled Roosh to collect online revenue, Amazon removed some of his books, and YouTube banned him from livestreaming. HuffPost triumphantly reported the campaign’s outcome: “Rape Apologist ‘Roosh’ Shutting Down Website After Running Out of Money.”

How would the management of HuffPost react if conservative journalists similarly “reached out” to its advertisers? I put that question to Lydia Polgreen, the editor-in-chief, noting that it would be easy to find articles (like one by Jesse Been defending violence against Trump supporters) that could scare off corporations. She dodged the question, referring me to a spokesperson’s bland statement about HuffPost being trusted by advertisers because of its “factual insights.”

A few conservatives have tried these censorious tactics against liberals, with little success. They’ve hired researchers to dig up damaging social-media posts by liberal reporters—a move that Polgreen called an “extremely alarming” threat to “independent journalism,” though it’s precisely what her HuffPost staff and Media Matters do to conservative journalists. Some conservatives responded to the Fox boycotts by announcing counter-boycotts against MSNBC, but these efforts got virtually no press coverage. Conservative journalists eagerly criticize the bias of their progressive colleagues, but they don’t have the same power to censor—or the same zeal.

To get an idea of the imbalance, consider the cases of Quinn Norton, a libertarian technology writer, and Sarah Jeong, a progressive technology writer. After the Times announced that it was hiring Norton for its editorial page, it took just seven hours for progressives to get her fired. On Twitter and in an internal Times chat room (as HuffPost reported), Norton was attacked for having tweeted that she was friends with a neo-Nazi hacker whom she had covered. She had always repudiated his ideology, calling him a “terrible person,” but that wasn’t enough to save her job. Six months later, in August 2018, when the Times hired Jeong for the editorial page, conservative activists unearthed tweets from Jeong, an Asian-American, denigrating white men as well as whites as a race. One used a hashtag “#CancelWhitePeople”; another predicted that whites would soon go extinct and said, “This was my plan all along.” The Times stuck with its decision to hire her...

Conservative journalists criticized the Times for its double standard, but they didn’t unite with the online activists demanding that Jeong be fired...

Suppose, after a small organization announces a march in support of abortion rights, that an alliance of antiabortion protesters vows to shut it down. As the marchers proceed, they’re confronted by a much larger group of counterprotesters wearing masks, carrying clubs, and chanting, “Whose streets? Our streets!” The counterprotesters block the marchers’ progress and throw eggs, milk shakes, and rocks at them. Fights break out, inspiring a news article: “Six people were injured today in clashes between anti-murder demonstrators and a far-left group linked to infanticide. Leaders of the anti-murder protesters blamed the left-wing group for provoking the violence and vowed to ‘continue defending ourselves and the most vulnerable members of our society.’ ”

Are there any right-wing journalists capable of misreporting a story so dishonestly? They haven’t had a chance to try. There’s no group of right-wing masked thugs who regularly try to stop left-wing speeches and marches. The “no-platforming” strategy is a specialty of Antifa, the left-wing network whose members have brawled at conservative and Republican events in Berkeley, San Jose, Charlottesville, Washington, D.C., Boston, Portland, Vancouver, and other cities. They describe themselves as “anti-fascist,” a ludicrous term for a masked mob suppressing free speech, but journalists respectfully use it anyway.

Media coverage obscures Antifa’s aggression by vaguely reporting “clashes” between antifascists who claim to be acting in “self-defense” (though they typically outnumber their enemies by at least four to one) against the violence of “racists” and “white supremacists” of the “alt-right.” It doesn’t matter if the conservative group is rallying to support free speech—hardly a traditional priority for fascists—and has specifically banned white supremacists from participating. Enterprising journalists can always find someone at the rally somehow linked to what some left-wing organization has designated a dangerous “hate group.” And journalists can turn to the much-quoted Mark Bray, a historian at Dartmouth, to provide a rationale for the masked mob’s tactics. In his Anti-Fascist Handbook, Bray acknowledges that Antifa’s no-platforming strategy infringes on others’ free speech but maintains that it is “justified for its role in the political struggle against fascism” and approvingly describes violence as “a small though vital sliver of anti-fascist activity.”

This coverage jibes with the media narrative that the great threat to civil liberties comes from the right, a rationale used for censoring conservatives. If a lone sociopath with right-wing leanings turns violent, commentators rush to blame it on the “climate” created by President Trump and Fox News, which makes no more sense than blaming Elizabeth Warren for the recent killing spree in Dayton by a supporter of hers, or blaming MSNBC for the Rachel Maddow fan who opened fire on Republican members of Congress in Alexandria, Virginia. Violent young men certainly exist on the right, but no conservative academic or journalist tries to rationalize their attacks as “self-defense.” They can post online threats and domination fantasies, but they don’t have the numbers or the institutional power to silence their opponents.

Yet most journalists obsess over right-wing dangers while ignoring or downplaying the actual violence on the left... Some, like Carlos Maza and the New Republic’s Matt Ford, have praised its milk-shaking tactic. While working at Vox, Maza tweeted, “Milkshake them all. Humiliate them at every turn. Make them dread public organizing.” He has also tweeted, “Deplatform the bigots,” and put that idea into practice with the outspoken support of Vox’s executives. His pressure on YouTube triggered the “Vox Adpocalypse,” in which YouTube cut off advertising revenue to Steven Crowder and other conservative commentators.

Outside of conservative and libertarian outlets, Antifa hasn’t attracted much scrutiny, even as its followers have assaulted journalists. (They also stood outside Carlson’s home, chanting, “Tucker Carlson, we will fight! We know where you sleep at night!”) The latest victim is Andy Ngo, a writer for Quillette, City Journal, the Wall Street Journal, and other publications, whose coverage of Antifa’s violence led to threats and harassment from the group’s members over the last two years. In June, Ngo was attacked at a rally in Portland for men’s rights that attracted two dozen supporters. They were opposed by 400 protesters who blocked streets and threw milk shakes handed out by organizers. As Ngo was reporting, masked Antifa protesters rushed him, stole his camera, showered him with milk shakes and eggs, kicked him, and pummeled his head, cutting his face and tearing his earlobe. He was hospitalized with a brain hemorrhage.

Any attack on a journalist for reporting usually inspires displays of professional solidarity, but the Wall Street Journal was the only major newspaper to editorialize in support of Ngo. The Committee to Protect Journalists, which issues frequent news bulletins on threats to the press, published nothing on the assault. Last year, the committee ran a detailed report on American journalists who felt threatened by the far right (none of whom had been physically injured), but it seems uninterested in Antifa.

Some progressive journalists condemned the assault on Ngo but faulted him and the conservative organizers of the rally for inviting violence, as in a HuffPost article headlined “Far-Right Extremists Wanted Blood in Portland’s Streets. Once Again, They Got It.” Aymann Ismail, a staff writer at Slate, tweeted, “This is bad, but Ngo has done worse.” The Portland Mercury tried discrediting Ngo by claiming that he previously had been complicit in an attack by right-wingers on Antifa—a baseless claim debunked by Reason’s Soave but nonetheless repeated by the Daily Beast, Vice, and Rolling Stone. Zack Beauchamp of Vox condemned the physical assault on Ngo but offered excruciating rationalizations for Antifa’s rage. “The mere fact that Ngo was assaulted doesn’t say what the meaning of that assault is, or what the broader context is that’s necessary to understand it,” he wrote, explaining that the controversy “isn’t really a debate about press freedoms” but rather about “two divergent visions of where American politics is.” One of those visions just happens to require silencing the other side.

Free speech should be of special interest to the Columbia Journalism Review, which calls itself “the leading global voice on journalism news and commentary.” But CJR sees the issue through a progressive filter. It not only criticized The New York Review of Books and Harper’s for publishing articles by journalists fired for sexual harassment but also essentially advocated a blacklist... After the violence at Berkeley and Middlebury, CJR urged reporters covering campus unrest to “be wary of amplifying flashpoints that match Trump’s own ‘intolerant left’ narrative,” and it has been following its own advice.

CJR showed little interest in Antifa’s censorious tactics until prompted recently by Quillette, the online magazine devoted to “dangerous ideas,” which has run articles by journalists and academics on the culture wars over free speech. Eoin Lenihan, a researcher in online extremism, reported in May on an analysis of the Twitter users who interact most heavily with Antifa sites. Most turned out to be journalists, including writers for the Guardian, the New Republic, and HuffPost as well for pro-Antifa publications. Following a group closely on Twitter, of course, doesn’t mean that one endorses its activity; journalists do need to track the subjects they cover. But these journalists seemed more devoted to promoting the cause than covering it impartially. “Of all 15 verified national-level journalists in our subset, we couldn’t find a single article, by any of them, that was markedly critical of Antifa in any way,” Lenihan wrote. “In all cases, their work in this area consisted primarily of downplaying Antifa violence while advancing Antifa talking points, and in some cases quoting Antifa extremists as if they were impartial experts.”

CJR responded to Lenihan’s article—but not by analyzing the press coverage of Antifa. Instead, it ran an article, “Right-Wing Publications Launder an Anti-Journalist Smear Campaign,” by Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch, a project of the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way. Holt’s article was a mix of ad hominem attacks, irrelevancies, and inaccuracies. Cathy Young, who wrote about the controversy for Arc Digital, concluded that every key point in his argument was wrong. Even worse was what Holt omitted. He didn’t even address Lenihan’s main conclusion: that press coverage of Antifa was biased—the issue that should have been most relevant to a journalism review.

Yet CJR remained uninterested in Antifa even after the subsequent assault on Andy Ngo. This past summer, it ran an article about rightists attacking journalists in Greece, but Ngo’s assault didn’t even rate a mention in CJR’s daily digest of journalism news. The only reference to the Portland melee was a summary of a Media Matters article criticizing Fox News for its coverage. Fox, like other outlets, had quoted a report from the Portland police that some of the milk shakes handed out by Antifa contained quick-drying cement, but no other evidence existed that this was true. To the nation’s leading journalism review, that was apparently the most important lesson of the episode for reporters: be careful not to exaggerate the violence of leftists opposed to free speech. And never mind that a journalist is in the hospital as a result of that violence."

Of course, the left are upset at Rufo but not Media Matters, because plagiarism is good when it's done by black people (that's the context that makes it good).

The left still claim that the right dishonestly pretends to care about free speech.

Links - 29th April 2024 (1 - Joe Biden)

Erin Elizabeth Health Nut News 🙌 on X - "Dean Phillips, who is running against Biden in the Democratic primary, makes a great point. Biden can’t run a bath or a hairdryer, let alone the country."
Biden Democratic Challenger Dean Phillips Snaps at Reporters - "“I’ve said this 18,000 times; I’m only doing this to defeat Donald Trump,” an agitated Phillips told CBS News. He continued:      Nobody seems to want to do that in the Democratic Party right now, other than me, because Joe Biden can’t, is my proposition, because the data says he can’t. No one in the country cares. In fact, most of the people in the country are going to the Trump rally right now because he’s listening to them. No one’s asking about this stuff. I’m just frustrated. I hope you understand why I’m getting tired of it. You’re doing your jobs, but you’re not asking the questions that Americans give a shit about!" CNN reported that Phillips originally launched his long-shot campaign, “saying he wanted to ‘strengthen’ President Joe Biden. He talked about not wanting to ‘demean’ or ‘diminish’ the president. He said he wanted to be a mainstream voice, making a broad appeal for a new generation wanting change.”  But those goals seem to have changed with Phillips’ arrival in New Hampshire, where he’s spent his time criticizing Biden for skipping the Granite State altogether over a dispute with the Democratic National Committee’s 2024 nominating calendar."

Jon Nicosia on X - "CNN now saying Biden WILL NOT talk to the nation."
Stephen L. Miller on X - "Because he can't. And everyone knows he can't."

President Biden on X - "While you were Super Bowl shopping, did you notice smaller-than-usual products where the price stays the same? Folks are calling it Shrinkflation and it means companies are giving you less for every dollar you spend. I’m calling on the big consumer brands to put a stop to it."
Zach Henry on X - "48 second video 14 jump cuts 🤦🏻‍♂️"

‘Incompetence?’: Joe Biden’s NATO video suspiciously edited together - YouTube - "Sky News Australia host James Morrow has reacted to what appears to be some suspicious editing on US President Joe Biden’s new NATO ad.   The social media video posted by The White House features the President talking about the importance of the NATO alliance.   Eagle-eyed journalist Joe Concha, however, counted 28 jump cuts despite the video being two minutes long and took to X to share his discovery.   “I don’t want to get all conspiratorial here, but there’s pretty much two options,” Mr Morrow said.   “One - someone in the White House decided that they would get a bit clever with the editing software and just went a little bit overboard.   “Or, maybe two, they used two cameras to jump between takes without it seeming obvious ... so that every time the President stumbled … they could put it back together.   “To put it in another way - the question is, is this a case of incompetence or incompetence?”"

Wilfred Reilly on X - "The reason most people think Biden is a trash President - obvious ~dementia aside - is that multiple fairly massive calamities have occurred with him in charge, such as....
*An almost fully open border and 8,000,000+ new illegal residents
* 2020-22 surge in crime, w USA back over 20,000 annual murders. The Black murder rate doubled during the BLM Era, and surged about 40% under Unc Joe.
*Stage 2 opiate crisis, with us over 100,000 annual drug ODs
*Lost war and disastrous pull-out in AFG, after ALL THAT TIME
*Our involvement in a Ukraine war that almost no one truly thinks would have started under Trump
*Something like 24% total inflation of food/core goods prices
*2nd half of the COVID crisis
Etc etc. You can argue he handled a garbage hand all right, but this "one of the best Presidents of my life-time" stuff is lunatic cope."
Of course, the same people who insisted that Trump was responsible for everything bad that happened when he was President, even if they admit he was not to blame, are either silent or making excuses for Biden or blaming others

Meme - Libs of TikTok: "The DOJ is demanding prison time for the person who discovered Ashley Biden's diary. Here's a reminder of what she wrote."
"Was I molested... @ a yung age ; showers w/ my dad (probably not appropriate"

Wilfred Reilly on X - "So, SOMEONE finally got penalized for Biden's semi-pedo diary full of disturbing family and business news.... ...the woman who found it!"
Peorian Refugee ☦️ on X - "How on earth did this alleged theft of personal property become a federal crime? Because I have a list of items stolen from me over the years that I would like the FBI to investigate and the DOJ to prosecute. Forthwith."

Meme - End Wokeness @EndWokeness: "EXCLUSIVE: Biden's FDA is distributing DEl instruction manuals: white fragility, micro-aggression, misgendering, etc. This is one document:"
"Ableism: Prejudiced thoughts and discriminatory actions based on differences in ability; usually directed towards individuals with physical, intellectual, or psychiatric disabilities.
Able-Bodied: A person who does not have a disability.
Accessibility: The design, construction, development, and maintenance of facilities, information and communication technology, programs, and services so that all people, including people with disabilities, can fully and independently use them. Accessibility includes the provision of accommodations and modifications to ensure equal access to 'employment and participation in activities for people with disabilities, the reduction or elimination of physical and attitudinal barriers to equitable opportunities, a commitment to ensuring that people with disabilities can independently access every outward-facing and internal activity or electronic space, and jit of best practices such as universal design.
ADA: Acronym for American with Disabilities is a federal civil rights legislation dealing with discrimination in employment, public accommodations, transportation, and telecommunications on the basis of disability.
Affirmative Action: Proactive policies and procedures for remedying the effect of past discrimination and ensuring the implementation of equal employment and educationat opportunities, for recruiting, hiring, training, and promoting women, minorities, people with disabilities, and veterans in compliance with the federal requirements enforced by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP).
Ageism: Prejudiced thoughts and discriminatory actions based on differences in age.
Ally: A person of one social identity group who stands up in support of members of another group; typically, a member of a dominant group standing beside of a target"

John Hasson on X - "1. Biden removes Houthis from terror list
2. Houthis start attacking ships
3. Biden threatens to put Houthis back on the list
4. Houthis keep attacking
5. Biden puts Houthis back on the list
6. Houthis keep attacking
TODAY: Biden offers to take Houthis off the list"

Biden's state of the union was a taxpayer-funded campaign speech - "As constitutionally mandated administrative reports go, U.S. President Joe Biden’s 2024 state of the union address was quite the jacked-up campaign speech... The speech was neither coherent nor content-rich, let alone necessary. But for several minutes, it was at least loud... “Turning up the volume to sell assertions that people don’t fundamentally believe won’t make them more convincing,” wrote David Winston in Roll Call. “Nor will an aggressive, if not downright angry, delivery.” Angry is right. Biden not only invoked the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot by supporters of Donald Trump, he repeatedly attacked his predecessor (and near-certain return opponent in the November election) as an enemy of democracy. “In his state of the union address last night President Biden cast himself as the defender of democracy who would jail former President Donald Trump,” observed Steven Calabresi, a professor of constitutional law at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. He warned that, “One of the key causes of the death of democracy is the criminalization of political disagreements.” Biden also “did what was once unthinkable,” as NBC News’s Natasha Korecki put it, deriding the Supreme Court justices who were present (several, understandably, rarely attend these events) for their controversial decision stripping federal protection from abortion and returning the issue to the states. The rest of the speech involved defending his unpopular performance on the economy and stumping for costly policy goals that his administration hopes to implement, including subsidies for housing and higher education. He also, jarringly, found time to demand the wealthy pay their “fair share in taxes,” even as his son faces charges for tax evasion. None of this is new. Calabresi added that, “Former President Trump and House Republicans are just as guilty of criminalizing politics as is the Biden administration,” and that, “Former President Barack Obama started this recent descent into the criminalizing of politics.” Criminal investigations and tax inquisitions of opponents by those in power are now a regular feature of American political life... Regarding George Washington’s verbal addresses to Congress as monarchical and unworthy of a republic, Thomas Jefferson chose to submit a written report to Congress, and this is how it was done throughout the 19th century and into the 20th. Appropriately, the state of the union report was converted back to an in-person speech by the monarchical Woodrow Wilson in 1913. Americans have suffered through the restored pageant ever since. The addresses are sometimes eloquent, other times incoherent and occasionally unifying. More recently, they’ve become exercises in ginning-up votes on the public dime without dipping into campaign coffers. Yet state of the union addresses aren’t even very effective at rallying the faithful. Among those who watched Biden’s address, “the 65 per cent who had a positive view of the speech was actually lower than any such speech CNN has polled in the past quarter-century — the previous low being Donald Trump’s 2018 address (70 per cent),” Aaron Blake noted in the Washington Post... There was no boost. RealClear’s average of polls currently puts the president’s approval at 40 per cent and disapproval at 55.5 per cent, which is essentially unchanged since December."

Biden says he commuted over Baltimore bridge by train 'many times'. The problem? It has no rail tracks! - "It's being called a case of 'mental derailment'. The US President Joe Biden said he had travelled to the collapsed Baltimore Key Bridge by train 'many times'. So what's the problem? The bridge does not have any rail lines and is only commutable by car or other vehicles... Clarifying Biden's remarks, a White House official in a statement said that he was "clearly" describing driving."

PolitiFact on X - "President Joe Biden recently said he commuted by both train and car as a senator, including over the Baltimore Key Bridge. Social media posts about his statement omitted context."
Stephen L. Miller on X - "Joe Biden makes another lie up and Politifact is fact checking users on social media."

Jack Poso 🇺🇸 on X - "BREAKING: The FBI has just informed the House that they cannot guarantee the physical safety of the Biden whistleblower after revealing what he knows"

It's time for the White House to put up or shut up - "If you’d asked me a year ago, I would have told you that Joe Biden was a reasonably clear favorite in the event of a rematch against Donald Trump.  Not an overwhelming favorite, mind you. But perhaps a 65:35 favorite. The case for Biden seemed obvious enough. Incumbents win re-election more often than not — and, of course, Biden beat Trump in 2020. The economy was beginning to recover from a period of intense inflation, and the labor market was strong. Trump had to fade a number of downside risks, being subject to a series of criminal trials and what looked like it could be a competitive Republican primary. (This was before Ron DeSantis began his long and embarrassing decline in the polls). Democrats were coming off a relatively strong midterm, buoyed by voter concerns about extreme and under-qualified Republican candidates and the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade... The first time my internal needle began to shift was in late summer, when Biden’s approval numbers remained poor even as the economy was improving and it was becoming more apparent that his advanced age — Biden turned 81 in November (Trump is 77) — was an enormous problem for voters and one that Democrats weren’t going to be able to spin away... What’s gotten worse for Biden? There are basically three categories of problems... it’s no longer safe to ignore that Biden has consistently trailed Trump in polls both nationally and (more importantly) in swing states. Or that Biden’s approval rating is just 39 percent and shows no signs of improvement, well below the threshold that would ordinarily make a president a favorite for re-election. Second, to borrow the poker term, Biden no longer has as many “outs” — meaning, contingencies that could improve his situation... Trump’s various criminal trials are (perhaps predictably) facing delays and the Georgia one is a mess, fairly or not, because of an alleged improper romantic relationship between Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and another member of the prosecution team. Yes, Democrats still have some upside if Trump is eventually convicted of something. But so far Trump’s favorability ratings have only improved.  And the economy? Well, it has gotten better and both consumer and investor moods have turned more optimistic. I’ve argued there was never really a gap between economic reality and economic perception in the first place, but if there was, it’s pretty much gone now. And yet Biden’s standing has not improved. On balance, that ought to be a concerning fact for the White House. It implies that Biden’s poor position is not the result of something fixable (the economy) but rather something that very much isn’t — the fact that he’s 81 and getting older every day. Third, yes, it’s become even clearer that Biden’s age is an enormous problem for him. As many as 86 percent of Americans say he’s too old in one poll, though numbers in the 70-to-75 percent range are more common — still an overwhelming majority in a bitterly-divided country. There’s also been recent bad news for Biden on this front. In the past couple of weeks:
A special counsel report characterized Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”;
In response to the special counsel report, Biden conducted an impromptu press conference in which, defending himself against allegations of memory loss, he confused the names of the leaders of Egypt and Mexico and was defiant with reporters in a way that — yes, this latter part is subjective — I doubt many impartial observers would say came across well.
Biden also declined to do a Super Bowl interview that might have allayed public concerns — something that President Obama did all eight years in office, Trump did three times, and Biden did in 2021.  The White House skipped the interview last year when the Super Bowl was carried by Fox, part of a general pattern of Biden avoiding Fox News. But with the game on CBS this year, there were no such excuses...
he's losing now and there's no plan to fix the problems other than hoping that the polls are wrong or that voters look at the race differently when they have more time to focus on it... even the most optimistic Democrats, if you read between the lines, are really arguing that Democrats could win despite Biden and not because of him... A lot of commentators that I respect have pointed out that Biden ought to do more public events that would help to allay public doubts about his mental sharpness. The problem is, one can infer the reason that Biden is not doing them — namely that the White House comms team is rational and has inferred that the cost of doing them outweighs the benefits because Biden is too likely to come across poorly... Biden’s doing a lot fewer interviews than even the media-hostile Trump. And when he does them, his performance is still just mediocre. That’s why something like turning down a Super Bowl interview ought to be highly concerning. It’s a relatively friendly setting — the White House presumably has some room to negotiate factors like the correspondent conducting the interview and the scope, and it’s pre-recored, so there’s an opportunity to formulate a damage control plan if anything goes really badly. Biden still didn't do it.  It’s also why the press conference from two weeks ago was worrying. This was an IPA that Biden basically couldn’t avoid. You can’t respond to your own Justice Department’s claim that your memory is failing by not saying anything at all. And yet when forced to make this appearance, Biden’s performance was poor... Biden was elected on the premise that he could handle four simultaneous crises: COVID, the economy, racism and climate change. Now even one such crisis leaves him overwhelmed, such that he suffers from repeated memory lapses? Nobody but the most hard-core partisan Democrat is being fooled by these excuses. And even they have their doubts; in the polls, majority of Democrats express concern about Biden's age."

John LeFevre on X - "Make this make sense.   According to the corporate media...   Christine Blasey Ford has no evidence, witnesses, or recollection of being in the same room as Brett Kavanaugh. She spent her GoFundMe on plastic surgery and is on The View promoting her new book. She is credible, brave, and heroic.   E. Jean Carroll has no evidence, witnesses, or recollection of what year she met Donald Trump. With her $83 million award, she's taking Rachel Maddow shopping. She is credible, brave, and heroic.  Tony Bobulinski has texts, emails, witnesses, and bank records showing pervasive Biden Crime Family corruption and perjury. He is a liar, fraud, and tool of Russia."

Meme - "Her: I bet he's thinking about other woman.
Him: I wish Ashley was still eight year's old. I miss taking showers with her.
*Jill Biden* *Joe Biden*"

Meme - *Biden sworn in*
"FINALLY, A RETURN TO NORMALCY."
*Warzone*

Biden says he regrets referring to 'an illegal' and defends direct criticism of Supreme Court in State of the Union - "During his State of the Union speech Thursday night, Biden used the term “an illegal” to describe Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan who was previously arrested by federal authorities after having crossed the border into the U.S. Ibarra has been charged with killing 22-year-old nursing student Laken Riley. The president did not mention Riley’s case in his MSNBC interview."
Naturally, someone was claiming this was fake
Respecting the judiciary is only when they support the left wing agenda

Despite media spin, there's still overwhelming evidence Joe Biden knew of family's business dealings - "For more than three years, Joe Biden has refused to address the avalanche of evidence about his family’s corrupt influence-peddling while he was VP. He has refused to address evidence that he was involved in son Hunter and brother Jim’s lucrative shakedown of shady characters in the world’s most corrupt countries — where he was in charge of US policy. He has lied point-blank when confronted, claiming to have no knowledge of Hunter and Jim’s business dealings, despite dozens of proven instances when he met Hunter’s foreign business partners, and spoke to them at least two dozen times on speakerphone."

Meme The New York Times @nytimes: "President Trump's allies have promoted unsubstantiated claims of corruption aimed at Hunter Biden in an effort to damage Joe Biden's campaign. Here's what we know, and what we don't know."
The New York Times @nytimes: "A federal grand jury charged Hunter Biden with a scheme to evade taxes on over a million dollars in income from foreign businesses, and could face a maximum of 17 years in prison if convicted. Here's a timeline of key events in the president's son's life."

Meme - Biden: "I'M SORRY, AMIGO."
Woman: "WHY ARE YOU APOLOGIZING TO THAT CRIMINAL ALIEN WHO KILLED MY GIRL?!"
Biden: "IT'S "UNDOCUMENTED MIGRANT", YOU BIGOT!"

Shane Gill - "I just saw Vladimir Putin do a two hour interview where he covered Russian history, the war in Ukraine, foreign policy and a myriad of other topics in an erudite and astute manner. I then saw Joe Biden babbling incoherently about how his memory is fine while calling Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the president of Egypt, the president of Mexico. The blunder came as he addressed the press about a special counsel report concerning his mishandling of classified documents. This man seems to be the candidate the DNC plans to run in an election that happens 10 months from now. He can hardly remember yesterday. At some point this has to be elderly abuse.  I don't think people understand how much trouble the United States of America is in. They tripped long ago, they just haven't crashed into the floor yet. But believe me, the ground is rushing up right into America's face."

Snopes REVERSES ‘fact check’ claiming Joe Biden didn’t wear hard hat backwards - "Misinformation hall-monitor website Snopes was forced to reverse a fact-check on Saturday after making the false claim the Joe Biden did not wear a hard hat backwards during a recent photo-op with construction workers.  When Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) posted the photo of Biden to X with several other construction workers, users responded slamming Biden for wearing the hard hat backwards."

‘Largest threat to US national security are US cops,’ says Biden’s new State Department spokesperson - "In a 2016 Facebook post, Jalina Porter, the newly named deputy spokesperson for the US State Department under the Biden administration wrote that American police posed the largest national security threat, greater than that of ISIS, because they 'killed' Black Americans... Porter, a former staffer of Rep. Cedric Richmond, (D-LA), who is now a White House senior adviser added, "If y’all don’t wake up and rise up to this truth, the genocide against Blacks in America will continue until we are near extinct." Porter’s comments appear to have been made following a video being released of Terence Crutcher, who was shot by police in Tulsa, OK. Crutcher, was under the influence of PCP and TCP at the time of the incident according to an autopsy.  The jury of the case wrote, "it is clear to the Jury after intensely studying the video, still photos, and testimony that the windows to the SUV driven by Terrance Crutcher that evening were open and that the Jury believes from said evidence that Terrance Crutcher did in fact reach into the window disobeying the instructions of the police officers on location.' The jury added that "any officer put in that situation at that exact moment and regardless of the skin color, gender or size of the suspect, would have performed the same way, which is in accordance with their law enforcement training.""
From 2021

Biden’s exploitation of the Tulsa tragedy - "Biden did not simply commemorate this tragedy. Instead, he used the occasion to make the false claim that the racism of Tulsa in 1921 is just as prevalent in the US in 2021, and to promote policies designed to ratchet up racial conflict...   Americans should remember and mark this racist violence. Tulsa should remind us of the wickedness of viewing society, and treating people differently, on the basis of race. It should serve as a warning that racial division risks terrible bloodshed. At the same time, we can also draw some hope from the fact that the Tulsa massacre is widely condemned today for the atrocity it was, and that the virulent racism that fed the white mob in 1921 is no longer tolerated. But that’s not the type of commemoration Biden had in mind. He sought to leverage the occasion to push his administration’s propaganda about the supposedly severe threat of white supremacy in the US today. In drawing crude analogies between 1921 Tulsa and today, Biden ultimately cheapened the gravity of the Tulsa race massacre. He sought to harness the emotion of this memory to support his mundane political initiatives. Biden even inserted excerpts from a standard stump speech about his infrastructure bill into what should have been the remembrance of a terrible event.   Biden levelled partisan arguments against Republican voting bills in states like Georgia and Texas, referring to them as a ‘truly unprecedented assault on our democracy’. This ‘current assault’ was ‘not just an echo of a distant history’, he claimed. As it happens, Biden’s claim is misleading. These Republican bills, while introducing some restrictions (including the rollback of some pandemic-related changes), provide for more voter access than in Biden’s home state of Delaware. Reasonable people can disagree about the details and effects of the bills. But Biden’s historical analogies are completely illegitimate – whether he is calling the Georgia law ‘Jim Crow on steroids’ or likening the Texas law to racial violence. Such exaggerations inflame rather than enlighten.   Biden also used his Tulsa address to announce efforts to support minority-owned small businesses and home ownership among black people. As I noted last week on spiked, Biden’s ‘equity’ policies, which call for government money to be distributed on the basis of skin colour, are a recipe for racial conflict... according to Biden’s narrative, nothing has really changed since 1921. Rather than viewing black people as potential agents of their economic future, Biden offered a patronising message that painted them as helpless. ‘Black entrepreneurs are just as capable of succeeding, given the chance, as white entrepreneurs are’, Biden said in Tulsa, ‘But they don’t have lawyers. They don’t have accountants.’ Someone should tell him that some black people are lawyers and accountants themselves.   Much worse than all of this was Biden’s attempt to raise the spectre of an ongoing white-supremacist movement – one that is allegedly just as bad as the rampaging white mob of 1921. ‘What happened in Greenwood was an act of hate and domestic terrorism with a through line that exists today still’, he said. ‘Terrorism from white supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today. Not ISIS, not al-Qaeda – white supremacists.’  Biden is peddling a fictional tale. Neo-Nazis, the KKK and other racist groups are miniscule and do not represent a serious threat to the country. Where is Biden’s evidence of this threat? The fact that he has to cite, over and over again, the relatively small number of Charlottesville marchers from four years ago only highlights the absurdity of his claim. And are America’s white supremacists today really on a par with al-Qaeda, which killed 3,000 Americans on 9/11 alone? What about ISIS, which beheaded, gang-raped and ethnically cleansed its way across the Middle East? The comparisons are ridiculous. A few days before Biden’s Tulsa address, his Department of Homeland Security issued a warning that domestic extremists may use violence on the 100th anniversary of the massacre. Of course, that did not happen – just like all the other warnings issued by the same department this year. Biden’s administration is clearly engaged in a fearmongering campaign that has sought to exploit the 6 January riot in the Capitol to his party’s advantage. Biden and the Democrats routinely refer to these rioters as ‘insurrectionists’ and ‘white supremacists’ without evidence. None has been charged with treason, sedition, insurrection or domestic terrorism. Biden is now leveraging the memory of Tulsa to wage a war on an enemy within... the Biden administration is heavily pushing a curriculum based on critical race theory and the New York Times’ 1619 Project into the nation’s schools... Barack Obama’s talks on race, including his 2008 campaign speech and his remarks following the Ferguson verdict, may not have been perfect. But at least he sought to provide a balanced reckoning. Compared with Biden, Obama appears like the second coming of MLK. Biden’s vulgar, ahistorical speech in Tulsa shows how far the Democrats’ views on race have degenerated since then. Rather than move us forward to a post-racial future, Biden and his party are trying to drag us back into the past."
From 2021

Links - 28th April 2024 (2 - George Floyd Unrest)

Eric Kaufmann: Media, Dems Ignore Facts And Logic As They Push Racial Division - "I asked the question in my survey to both black and white respondents, what is more, which is the more likely cause of death for a young black man in America? Is it a car accident or is it to be shot by the police? It is a clear fact that it is about 10-1 with car accidents over a police bullet, and yet eight-in-ten African-American Biden voters and seven-in-ten whites who believe... white Republicans are racist actually said it was police that were more likely to be the cause of death for young black men. So this is leading people to have a distorted picture of reality. And that feeds into a whole series of political attitudes... if you look at what Biden says, he could have brought the nation together by talking about Tony Timpe, the white man whose life was pressed out of him in 2016 by Dallas police officers. You could talk about the fact that as many white people are killed as black people.  But no, instead, choosing to turn this into a conversation about systemic racism and racialize what is not clearly a racist issue. This is an issue of police brutality, perhaps, but it is not obviously a racist issue and racializing that fuels this diversion of perception away from statistical reality... in a way there are two problems. One, it introduces divisiveness, when you have sweeping generalizations about whole categories of people, like Americans and police officers and white people and so on.  But secondly, in terms of helping African-Americans themselves. One of the questions I put to black survey respondents -- I had half of them read some Ta-Nahesi Coates, a critical race theory-inspired author, and half of them read nothing. Those who read Coates, their belief that they can make their life plans work out dropped 15 points.  And you see those cities that had BLM marches and protests, there was a 20% increase in the murder rate between 2014-2019. Some awareness of the downstream cost of this on the black community and on the United States as a whole surely is necessary to inject a bit of context and a bit more rationality into what has kind of become, what John McWhorter said, almost as a religion of anti-racism, as a symbolic crusade rather than one grounded in facts and logic."

Kids Get Schooled on Radical Politics - "Children at a Brooklyn public elementary school are being taught revolutionary politics and communist terms from a Black Lives Matter coloring book... teachers at PS 321—the kindergarten through fifth grade school in Park Slope—supplied students with the coloring book, What We Believe, as part of a lesson for Black History Month. The book uses drawings and worksheets to promote the 13 tenets of the Black Lives Matter movement, under titles like “Queer Affirming,” “Transgender Affirming,” and “Restorative Justice.” Principle number 2, “Empathy,” is described as “engaging comrades with the intent to learn about and connect with their contexts.”  The coloring book also lists Black Lives Matter’s “national demands,” including “mandate black history & ethnic studies,” “hire more black teachers,” and “fund counselors not cops.” One parent of a PS 321 fourth grader, whose grandparents fled Communist China before moving to the U.S., said she and her husband were “shocked” that the book used the word comrade—and that it appeared to promote political propaganda.  “Using the word comrades comes from Communist times,” said the parent, whose 10-year-old daughter attends the school, also known as William Penn. “They are using words that I don’t think are appropriate for elementary school.” She said she first discovered the coloring book on Tuesday, February 13, when a snow day forced her daughter to learn from home.  “This is classwork, not homework,” the parent said. “If it weren’t for the snow, we wouldn’t have known.”   Lessons in the coloring book tell children to reflect on Black Lives Matter’s 13 principles. Some of the exercises, parents said, appear innocuous; a page about “Restorative Justice,” for example, asks students: “Why is it important to offer to forgive someone?” But another, entitled “Transgender Affirming,” instructs students to read the book When Aidan Became a Brother about a girl who transitions to a boy, and then answer questions on a worksheet like, “How do you feel when someone tells you what you can or can’t do based on your gender?”Another principle, “Black Villages,” is described as “disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement.” Another, called “Intergenerational,” encourages a “communal network free from ageism.” Another public school parent whose family left the Soviet Union when she was a teenager said the language in the book reminds her “of the songs we were made to sing as elementary school children. ‘Dismantling’ and ‘comrade’ and everything—it really reminds me of the word salad that was a part of those songs.”  She compared the Black Lives Matter movement to communism, saying: “same salad, different dressing.” Brandy Shufutinksy, the director of education at the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values, who is black and holds a doctorate in international multicultural education, said she was “offended” that the curriculum “demonizes the nuclear family.”  “They frame it as some form of white supremacy,” Shufutinksy said. “There are a number of people beside myself who are deeply offended by the idea that black Americans should not strive for something that was denied to our ancestors for so long.”  The educational materials used by PS 321 are created by Black Lives Matter at School, an organization founded in 2016 by a group of Seattle teachers to educate students from pre-K to 12th grade about BLM’s ideology. In 2018, Black Lives Matter at School launched a national Week of Action in February to teach “lessons on structural racism, Black history, intersectional Black identities, and anti-racist movements.” According to the group’s website, the curriculum is now taught at a total of 50 schools across 21 states and six countries... Several parents who spoke to The Free Press said they were upset that the coloring book failed to teach their children about black history... The fourth-grade mother said her daughter’s teacher told her the coloring book was the only lesson planned for Black History Month, other than a schoolwide project to make a quilt honoring famous black figures. She added that, after the Week of Action, her daughter still had never heard of civil rights hero Rosa Parks and didn’t know what Martin Luther King Jr. had achieved to make him famous.   Furthermore, she said, the coloring book presents controversial ideas “as fact.” But, “it’s not necessarily true. It’s not like every black person believes in these principles.”   Shufutinsky agrees: “There is nothing in these principles that talks about honoring greats in black American history. There is nothing in here that is actual scholarship. It doesn’t speak to education. It speaks to ideology.”"

Meme - Lelee Anne: "Mixed children are some of the most beautiful children *brown hand in a white woman's hand in a black man's hand*"
Lelee Anne: "This is what I am hungry for!! *Snickers Bars: 'Arrest Myles COsgrove The Cops Who Killed Brett Hankison Breonna Jonathan Mattingly Taylor'*
"Pregnant woman, 22, is decapitated as her family planned baby shower: Horror as head is found in a dumpster outside house as police charge her 'savage monster' ex-boyfriend, 22, with murdering her and unborn child"
*Black man and white woman*

Meme - "Black progressives crying over white men who were trying to set fires in a black neighborhood:"

Antifa militant who shot first at Kyle Rittenhouse sentenced to 3 years over Kenosha robbery - "This week a court sentenced Joshua and Kelly Ziminski to 20 months in prison for burglary and robbery with threat of force charges that they pleaded guilty to in May. Other charges were dropped in exchange for a plea deal...   In the heat of the 2020 riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Joshua Ziminski fired a "warning shot" just before Kyle Rittenhouse shot three men in self-defense. Ziminski was out of bail for his involvement in the riots when he and his wife went on the crime spree that earned them 7 felony charges...   During the riots, Joshua Ziminski was captured on video firing his gun into the air just before Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed Joseph Rosenbaum in what was ultimately ruled as self-defense. All charges in connection to the 2020 riots against Ziminski were eventually dropped."
Too bad Rittenhouse got away with murder!

Meme - ">I never chased Kyle Rittenhouse
>okay, I mean I chased after people about to harm Kyle Rittenhouse
>okay, I did chase Kyle Rittenhouse
>but I didn't have a gun
>but I didn't mention the gun
>okay, I had a gun but it fell out
>okay, I had a gun but it fell out into my hand
>okay, I had a gun but it fell out into my hand but I didn't do anything with it
>okay, I had a gun but I pulled it out on purpose and chased Kyle Ritten house and pointed it at him
>okay, I had a gun that I pulled out and chased Kyle Rittenhouse with and pointed at him and it was illegal for me to have
ALL OF THIS HAPPENED IN 30 MINUTES"

Meme - "ACTUALLY, THE LEFT SUPPORTS WORKERS' RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS."
"PHEW... SO, YOU'D UNDERSTAND"
"UNDERSTAND WHAT?"
*Kyle Rittenhouse shoots Gaige Grosskreutz, who was about to shoot him*

Some Protests Against Police Brutality Take a More Confrontational Approach - The New York Times - "Terrance Moses was watching protesters against police brutality march down his quiet residential street one recent evening when some in the group of a few hundred suddenly stopped and started yelling.  Mr. Moses was initially not sure what the protesters were upset about, but as he got closer, he saw it: His neighbors had an American flag on display.  “It went from a peaceful march, calling out the names, to all of a sudden, bang, ‘How dare you fly the American flag?’” said Mr. Moses, who is Black and runs a nonprofit group in the Portland, Ore., area. “They said take it down. They wouldn’t leave. They said they’re going to come back and burn the house down.”... The marches in Portland are increasingly moving to residential and largely white neighborhoods, where demonstrators with bullhorns shout for people to come “out of your house and into the street” and demonstrate their support. These more aggressive protests target ordinary people going about their lives, especially those who decline to demonstrate allegiance to the cause. That includes a diner in Washington who refused to raise her fist to show support for Black Lives Matter, or, in several cities, confused drivers who happened upon the protests... [Some] frustrated that little has changed since Mr. Floyd was killed, say that sitting idly and watching a protest without participating nowadays is to show tacit support for racism.  “We don’t need allies anymore,” said Stephen Green, an investor and entrepreneur in Portland who is Black. “We need accomplices.” In Rochester, N.Y., protesters have confronted people at outdoor restaurants, shaking dinner tables. Marchers in Washington also accosted people eating outside, urging everyone to raise their fists to show their allegiance to the movement.  The more personal tactics echo those being used against elected officials, with activists showing up not only outside mayor’s offices but their homes as well. The apartment building where the mayor of Portland lives has been vandalized. Protesters lit fires outside, ignited fireworks and broke into one of the businesses in the building on his birthday. In San Jose, Calif., demonstrators graffitied and egged the mayor’s house and lit an American flag in front of it, according to the police. In Rochester, people have recently posted police officers’ home addresses and information about their families, according to a police spokeswoman... Mr. Green argued that the tactics were working, even as they inconvenienced him and his family. He described the smell of tear gas and wail of sirens as the marches came to his neighborhood, which he said kept his 7-year-old daughter awake.  “It’s one thing if you can see something on TV, but if you can hear it and you can smell it in your house, that brings it home,” said Mr. Green, who grew up in Portland. “We need people willing to say, ‘I’m down to lose this friend because stuff needs to change. I’m down to make my neighbor uncomfortable.’ Being nice wasn’t changing anything.”... “The crowd was — I won’t even say mostly white — I’ll say it was an almost exclusively white crowd marching through the whitest neighborhood in Portland shouting ‘Black lives matter’ and ‘Black lives are magic,’” said Ms. Murphy, who is Black and hosts an educational children’s YouTube series. “What I was witnessing was a lamenting prayer, a cry of remorse and shame among the white people. That’s what I saw. It was healing.”... The same night the protesters came to the couple’s door last month, they marched into Kenton’s commercial district and used restaurant picnic tables as fuel for fires. They collected the colorful wooden dividers the neighbors had recently built for outdoor dining and set those ablaze as well. Mr. Moses and others in the community ran into the protests with fire extinguishers.  Protesters that night broke into the Portland Police Association building and set it on fire. A man was later seen scrubbing the sidewalk graffiti — a popular message was “PPB = KKK,” meaning that the Portland Police Bureau is the Ku Klux Klan. Mr. Green said that he opposed the destruction of property, but that he also understood it. And he believes, generally, that the more direct protest tactics in residential areas are working because they make the movement more personal, and reveal who truly supports change. If someone is against the movement, they keep their lights off or refuse to raise their fist, he said, adding that taking the debate into homes and to families is essential. Some residents in Portland say the tactics are escalating as the protests become increasingly dominated by white people, including anarchists and supporters of antifa, the diffuse collection of militant left-wing activists that has a strong presence in the region.  The movement is splintered in Portland between more mainstream Black Lives Matter marches and the more aggressive, sometimes chaotic antifa or black bloc protests, where demonstrators dress in black and wear motorcycle helmets or ski masks to make it difficult to identify — or later prosecute — them... A small free literature selection was set up on the grass and overseen by three people in ski masks. It was a popular offering, and people crowded around, craning to see the pamphlets.  Titles included “Why Break Windows”; “I Want To Kill Cops Until I’m Dead”; “Piece Now, Peace Later: An Anarchist Introduction to Firearms”; “In Defense of Smashing Cameras”; and “Three-Way Fight: Revolutionary Anti-Fascism and Armed Self Defense.”... One white man stepped onto his patio clapping and hollering in support of the passing march. The group called for him to join. He smiled and waved them on, still clapping. They began to chant that he was spineless. He looked worried. But the march moved along, and he went back into his house.  “You’ll never sleep tight, we do this every night,” the protesters chanted."
From 2020's Cultural Revolution. We're still that told left wingers don't hate their countries
As usual, what starts as a gesture of solidarity quickly becomes compulsory

Meme - The Other 98%: "Many of you think this is praying... You pray in private-this is marketing. *Democrats taking a knee while wearing Kente cloth with links to slavery*"
This is mocking The Other 98% for using this text with a Christian praying in public

Meme - "TRUMP NEEDS TO STOP STAGING RIDICULOUS PHOTO OPS TO PANDER TO HIS BASE *Democrats wearing Kente cloth with links to slavery*""

Meme - The Rabbit Hole @TheRabbitHole84: "After George Floyd:
- White offenders were mentioned more.
- Black offenders were mentioned less.
In other words: White-on-Black homicides get more focus than Black- on-White homicides. In 2020, there were:
- 876 White-on-Black homicides
- 1,877 Black-on-White homicides
Clear bias in which types of interracial homicides Legacy Media likes to cover."

Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 on X - "“Get him! Get him!” In scenes reminiscent of Kenosha, BLM militants at @uofmemphis chase and pursue attendees of the Kyle Rittenhouse @ThisIsKyleR student event. Video by @Julio_Rosas11:"

Chicago police shooting: 96 shots fired in a fatal traffic stop. Here’s what the bodycam footage shows - "While a preliminary investigation suggests the driver opened fire on officers first, his family and attorneys question why plain-clothed officers swarmed Dexter Reed’s car with guns drawn and fired dozens of shots at him."
Clashes break out after release of Dexter Reed shooting video - Chicago Sun-Times - "One person was hospitalized when a clash erupted at a protest Tuesday evening where community activists and family members of Dexter Reed demanded the firing of officers who fatally shot the 26-year-old during a traffic stop."
The police are not allowed to defend themselves when black men attack them, even if the black men shoot at them

Jesse Singal on X - "This is very strange reporting from the AP. I only dip into these issues sporadically, but even I know that once police open fire, they keep shooting until they are sure the "threat is neutralized." The number of shots fired doesn't really mean much -- it's the decision to open fire in the first place that matters most."

Jesse Singal on X - "This article is written in a truly astonishing manner given that the available evidence, including on the video, suggests the young man in question opened fire at police before any of them shot at him (you can see cops fleeing in the video). You have to read the article with a fine-tooth comb to even come away with that absolutely crucial fact. The headline is "Police fire 96 shots in 41 seconds, killing Black man during traffic stop," with no mention of how the shooting started. Journalism is in such serious trouble right now."
Dexter Reed shot, killed by Chicago police after traffic stop - The Washington Post (aka "Police fire 96 shots in 41 seconds, killing Black man during traffic stop")

wanye on X - "There is no other word for running the graduation picture of a criminal killed in a violent altercation with police than “propaganda” I mean, this is just the laziest, most obvious kind of cheap propaganda and it’s embarrassing that it works"
AT on X - "Despite all this, persisting on the internet of course is the belief that mainstream news will go out of its way to find the least flattering photo of a black subject."
Sprat on X - "Remembering when all the networks used George Zimmerman's haggard mugshot next to a beaming school photo of a 12 year-old Trayvon Martin"
BRAD 🇺🇲🇮🇱🇻🇪 on X - "Any Black person shot by the police is made into a kind of religious figure. It's so weird."

wanye on X - "There is no other word for running the graduation picture of a criminal killed in a violent altercation with police than “propaganda”"
Thread by @DanFriedman81 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "The reason they use graduation photos is forgotten internet lore. When Mike Brown was shot in 2014, media went to his Facebook to get pictures of him. In every photo, he was smoking blunts, fanning money or throwing gang signs. So they used photos of him looking like a thug. Black Twitter reacted angrily. They said that the media was using images of Brown that stereotyped him. There was a trending hashtag #iftheygunnedmedown of college students or professionals posting pictures of themselves looking like thugs in solidarity with Brown. Media outlets, thoroughly shamed, went to Brown’s family to get a picture that did not make him look like a stereotypical thug. They provided a photo of him in graduation regalia. From then on, media started using graduation photos of men who died while being arrested. Here is a contemporaneous article about the hashtag."
If you use photos of himself that a black man has uploaded for public view, you're racist

Wilfred Reilly on X - "Virtually every BLM martyr was a scumbag criminal. I used to put this more politely, but enough. The George Floyd case was at least a very real one in legal terms, whoever the man was - but just run your mind back through Jacob Blake, Rayshard Brooks, Michael Brown in reality, Alton Sterling, Joseph Rosenbaum, etc etc.  These are the Civil Rights heroes of today because there aren't any genuine race wars still going on - certainly not in a W-on-B direction, and in reality not in any direction. No better symbols exist."
scott moore on X - "It is almost like a 1984 thing.  I know there must, sometimes, be legitimate victims of police misconduct out there.  But it seems like BLM ignores those cases and intentionally goes for bad actors to make into heroes/martyrs.  It is like a power play or something.  An act of dominance.   Must give them a feeling of god-like power to make a hundred million people believe an obvious lie."
Just Kansas Things on X - "I still think this is in fact that reason the martyrs get popular. It can't be someone that everybody finds sympathetic. It has to be someone who is flawed enough for the conservatives to say "eh more where that came from," which then causes the left to double-down and spiral."
Or, BLM loves and glorifies criminals. There's a reason "fuck the police" sentiment is rife

Wilfred Reilly on X - "Looking through actual murder patterns in the areas where the last two twitter-trending fights/killings (Wisconsin, Wyoming) and most recent viral cop shooting (Chicago) took place, I realize something deeply depressing.   There must be actual human people looking through literally tens of thousands of murders involving Black or poor white men with same-race killers, ignoring them all, picking out the tiny bloc of incidents that could polarize citizens and make the cash register ring, and publicizing every single one of them. Number of unarmed Black men with white police killers last year? Ten. Number of cookies-off Google results for "unarmed Black man shot by cops 2023?" 1,140,000.   There are better ways to make money, gang."
JL on X - "Cop I knew who left Seattle early said there was a group that went through old case files trying to find officer involved shootings to do this exact thing. And this was about 5-7yrs"
Dbag Detector on X - "I've been telling my 17 yo son that you should not fuck around with cops they have guns, since he was about 13 yo"
Randy Tinfow on X - "I got pulled over for speeding yesterday. As has been my practice for 40+ years, put my hands on the steering wheel and asked for permission to open the glove compartment. Everyone stays calm."
AV8R on X - "I owe my Dad. He said “make it to the precinct alive and we’ll straighten it out together.”"

Swann Marcus on X - "The all-time funniest fake outrage over a police shooting was when Tyree Moorehead - a local activist in Baltimore - was literally on top of a woman while holding a knife to her throat when a police officer shot him and they still tried to turn him into a BLM cause celebre"

Will Ireland survive the Woke Wave? - "Talk to an educated Irish person in a global city today, and you will quickly discover that they hold the twin ideologies of post-Celtic Tiger Ireland: a vague sentimental remnant of the Irish ethno-nationalism of the revolutionary period and the internationalist and multicultural open society values of Google.  Point out that these are contradictory in any way, like mentioning Ireland’s role as an international tax haven or asking why there are so many Irish nationalists living in London, Berlin and San Francisco and so few living in Dublin, and you will be met with defensive anger.  As a former colony, historically unsullied by the sins of slavery and imperialism, Ireland’s national identity has been largely free of the culture of pathological self-hatred found across most of the liberal West today. An uncomplicated sense of national pride has remained the default, even and sometimes especially on the political Left. But all of that is about to change. “Toppling statues is just the beginning”, ran a recent Irish Times headline, if the goal is “How to make Irish culture less racist.” As self-flagellating stories about the Irish public’s racism are set to now become a daily part of life, Ireland’s elites can breathe a sigh of relief. Any populist pressure they sensed brewing while overseeing a deeply economically unequal society with skyrocketing homelessness, rents and outward youth migration can now be replaced with an imported moral narrative that turns the spotlight around on the reactionary masses who must, in the name of equality, learn to think of themselves as privileged.   While educated Irish young people in Dublin copied the Black Lives Matter protests from America, our culturally progressive and economically Thatcherite Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, recently singled out the statue of Irish Republican Sean Russell as a problematic target. Russell fought in the War of Independence and died trying to secure arms from Germany in 1940. Wrongly thinking that historical facts could ever stand a chance against the wrecking ball of the current international woke cultural revolution, some Republicans correctly pointed out that he was not doing so out of any allegiance to Nazism, having tried to secure arms from any nations that might give them. Protesters still vandalised the statue anyway, painting it with the gay pride rainbow flag with added black and brown to mark their support for Black Lives Matter. Having uncritically adopted the fashions of American academia, Ireland’s new young educated elite have started parroting the imported language of “white privilege” versus “people of colour”, and the dangers of nationalism versus the superior multinational capitalism-friendly values of openness.  There is little reason to think the cultural revolution sweeping across Europe from America will stop and listen to the “but we’re on your side!” pleas offered by Irish Republicans about how they supported the anti-apartheid movement in the Eighties or how our nationalist heroes were anti-imperialists or that our Republicans today are economically left-leaning and pro-immigration. Anyone who thinks these details will matter, and that any remnant of Irish cultural nationhood will be immune, is simply not paying attention to the unstoppable internal logic of the current cultural revolution underway. This new generation of elite aspirants are already showing that they make no such distinction and simply recast the native Irish as “white people” whose privilege needs to be checked and ultimately dismantled.   It is worth asking why the woke cultural revolution sweeping Irish society would spare a single one of our national statues, monuments or heroes. One could go through the entire list of signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic and find cancellable and problematic thoughts uttered by each of them in different contexts... Why wouldn’t our literary heroes also be wiped from the canon and from the public space?... What about the special place given to the Irish language in state institutions, which it could be easily argued excludes and discriminates against foreigners? What about the explicitly ethnocentric Irish right of return policy, which grants people with Irish grandparents the right to citizenship? Irish liberal media used to love showcasing the young children of immigrants playing hurling or speaking Irish, which offered a vision of the future in which anyone could be Irish through adoption of the national culture, but what happens when those young people are filled with poison in the indoctrination camps of university and taught to fear and resent the native population as white racists? Surely they’ll let us keep the Marxist James Connolly, one might think, who could be spared due to some often cited quotes that liberals love about the limitations of nationalism without economic equality or against the oppression of women. In fact, the Connolly statue was defaced by anarchists years ago. On May Day 2005, the statue of James Connolly in Dublin was graffitied, and a black bloc hood and mask — the kind associated with antifa today — placed on its head, supposedly in the name of “appropriating” and “reclaiming” the figure; and that was back when the anarchist cultural project was not yet indistinguishable from every elite institution, from academia to the NGO sector to the international capitalist class... Unlike the republics that can claim to be founded on abstract and universalist principles, sooner or later there is simply no getting around the brick wall of truth that the Irish nationhood envisioned by our revolutionary founders was fundamentally ethno-nationalist... Nationalists will no longer be dealing with a few scattered genteel revisionist intellectuals like Conor Cruise O’Brien, but the full tidal ideological force of the American Empire, with its sophisticated cold war psychological warfare tactics, its world dominating oligarchy and every elite institution at home and abroad on its side.   Ireland is uniquely vulnerable to all of this as a nation without a national economic base, wholly reliant on the whim and will of aggressively ideological multinationals temporarily parked there for tax purposes... It is a tragic irony of Irish history that, having fought a globe-spanning empire to build an independent Irish nation, and having fought the imperial landlords through agrarian peasant movements before that, giving the world the very word boycott, it stands today as a tax colony of American tech in which the native young leave because of its unchecked speculative landlordism.   While its subservient relationship to the British Empire brought famine and hardship, Ireland’s subservient relationship to an American progressive tech oligarchy brought about the Celtic Tiger and as a consequence we were happy to ignore the truth of the arrangement: that we were simply passing from one form of colony to another."
From 2020. Prescient