Friday, July 17, 2020



The Truth Behind Cancel Culture

The story of leftists boycotting a Hispanic food brand over disagreement with Trump

On December 5, 1955, African Americans refused to ride the city buses in Montgomery, Alabama, to protest the segregation of seats. Blacks in the back, whites in the front. This protest marked the spark of the Civil Rights movement as it lasted just over a year, ending on December 20, 1955. It is regarded as the first large-scale U.S. demonstration against segregation. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually ordered Montgomery to integrate its bus system. A boycott has a specific goal in mind. A boycott isn’t merely about disagreeing with someone’s opinion. It requires a sacrifice from its participants — taking aggressive action, but accomplishing a greater good for others.

Fast-forward 65 years later.

Boycotting is one thing. Cancel culture is another. Cancel culture demands perfection of opinion. In other words, if your opinion doesn’t line up with the “culture,” then your thoughts are deemed dirty, disgusting, and damaging. If you violate these undisclosed “rules,” then you are vilified, dominated, harassed, and bullied. This narcissistic culture is by nature pretending to have some sort of moral high ground by which they hurl insults at others to control them.

A tweet from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is illustrative:

“Oh look, it’s the sound of me Googling ‘how to make your own Adobo.’”

Igor Volsky tweeted: “The CEO of @GoyaFoods is at a White House event saying we’re ‘blessed to have a leader’ like Trump. Make your shopping decisions accordingly.”

The cancel culture believes:

I can say whatever I want, but you can’t say whatever you want.

You don’t need to think because I think for you.

Two wrongs make a right.

But here’s the antidote to cancel culture in three words: “I’m not apologizing.”

The chief executive of Goya Foods, Robert Unanue, said that he would not apologize for his previous statement that the U.S. is “blessed” to have President Trump as a leader.

The CEO said of America, “It’s such an honor and such a blessing to be here in the greatest country in the world, the most prosperous country in the world, and we continue to grow. That’s what we’re here to do today.” He went on to say, “Today, it gives me great honor — and by the way, we’re all truly blessed at the same time to have a [leader] like President Trump, who is a [builder], and that’s what my grandfather did. He came to this country to build, to grow, to prosper. We have an incredible builder, and we pray. [We pray] for our leadership, our president, and we pray for our country that we will continue to prosper and to grow.”

Did you hear that? A man. An American. An unapologetic Patriot. Unlike so many that get bullied by cancel culture, Unanue was not going to cower to the pressure. I hope people like Drew Brees and the rest of the crumbling conservative crew will take a page out of his book. He told “Fox & Friends,” “It’s suppression of speech. In 2012, I was called by Michelle Obama to Tampa and they wanted the African American community and the Hispanic community to eat more nutritionally. They called on us as the most recognized Hispanic brand in the United States and I went. You’re allowed to … praise one president, but not allowed to make a positive comment [about Trump]. All of a sudden that’s not acceptable.” He said, “It’s a double standard.”

I love when the cancel culture gets put in its place. The cancel culture won’t win if we do our part. What can we do? Parents, don’t spoil your children. Teach them personal responsibility. Teach them how to value the small things in life and be grateful. This way, they won’t covet what others have and feel they are entitled to the things of others. End cancel culture one house at a time.

SOURCE 







BLM subscribes to the ideas of racists

The founders of communism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, were inveterate racists.

One of the great ironies of the Black Lives Matter movement is the fact that it is rooted in and promotes Marxism. BLM ostensibly claims to exist to fight against the injustice of racism against black Americans. Indeed, BLM justifies its radical calls to “defund the police” with dubious claims of America’s law enforcement being “systemically racist.”

However, if BLM’s cause was truly a fight against actual racism, then why has the movement not fully divested itself from one of history’s most prolific racists, Karl Marx? Marx and his contemporary and friend Friedrich Engles are, of course, the fathers of that most murderous of political philosophies, communism. Communist tyrants have murdered well over 100 million people.

But both Marx and, more significantly, Engles were also notorious for their racist ideas. Both men viewed blacks specifically as lesser humans and more closely related to “the animal kingdom” than other races. In fact, Marx and Engels believed that race was a primary determiner for one’s economic status and ability. Using this belief, they developed a system by which they “radicalized skin-color groups, ethnicities, nations, and social classes, while endowing them with innate superior and inferior character traits,” as noted by Erik van Ree of the Institute for East European Studies of the University of Amsterdam. “They regarded race as part of humanity’s natural conditions, upon which the production system rested. ‘Races’ endowed with superior qualities would boost economic development and productivity, while the less endowed ones would hold humanity back.”

And yet, despite this reality, BLM cofounders Patrisse Cullors and Alicia Garza are unapologetic in their embrace of Marxism. “The first thing, I think, is that we actually do have an ideological frame,” Cullors stated back in 2015. “Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists.”

The actual reason behind the rioting and destruction and the tearing down of statues has very little to do with race. In reality, BLM Marxists are attacking the ideology of individual Liberty, which our Founding Fathers espoused, fought for, and established. In truth, race has almost nothing to do with the BLM movement; it just serves as a cover to deflect broad criticism for its anti-American revolution. But the irony and rank hypocrisy of blacks “fighting racism” by espousing the ideas of white racists isn’t lost on us

SOURCE 





Idiots at USA Today Apparently Ignorant of the American Eagle

 

We certainly didn’t have to wait long this week for someone in the mainstream media to step in it and embarrass themselves because of their Trump Derangement Syndrome. USA Today decided to fact-check claims that some Trump campaign swag was Nazi because it featured — and I kid you not — an American eagle.

Before we delve into this lunacy about the eagle in question, it should be noted that USA Today is the CNN of newspapers. Just as CNN would have no audience whatsoever if it weren’t being broadcast to people stuck in airport terminals, USA Today wouldn’t have any readership if it weren’t being given away for free in hotels all over the country. Honestly, I rarely read it when I’m on the road and it’s delivered to my hotel room door every weekday.

It’s also rather laughable that the paper was presenting this as a “fact-check.” Trump must be the most fact-checked president in history. Barack Obama enjoyed eight years of a fact-free presidency while never, ever being fact-checked by the swooning MSM.

Back to the eagle. Victoria has the full story here, and I think her opening paragraph sums it up nicely:

"It’s official, the useful idiots on the Left and never-Trumper clan have simply lost their damned minds. The American eagle on your money is now deemed a cancelable object because President Trump’s campaign store put an eagle on a tee-shirt that they claim, if you squint your eyes and look a thousand yards out there somewhere there’s a Nazi symbol."

The Bald Eagle was chosen as the national symbol back in 1792, so it’s not like all of this snuck up on USA Today. This “fact-check” is indicative of how invested the MSM is in keeping this “all Trump supporters are Nazi racists” false narrative going. Some idiot intern of theirs was probably watching Man in the High Castle, for the twelfth time while trolling the Trump campaign site and decided that the picture of the eagle on the t-shirt was literally Hitler or something.

To say that the paper got dragged for this Nazi eagle nonsense on social media would be a monumental understatement. The morons stuck with the original post though. The USA Today Twitter account did issue a hilariously tone-deaf clarification that said, “Worth noting, the eagle is a longtime US symbol, too.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if the social media millennial who wrote that tweet didn’t know that about the eagle until just then.

SOURCE 





Cultural battle more than a matter of opinion as New York Times columnist Bari Weiss resigns

Bari Weiss, a high-profile editor and writer for the New York Times NYT 3.04% opinion section, resigned on Monday (Tuesday AEST), citing what she said was unchecked bullying from colleagues and depicting the news organisation as a place where the free ­exchange of ideas was no longer welcome.

In a letter to New York Times publisher AG Sulzberger was posted on her website the next day, Weiss wrote that she has been “the subject of constant bullying by ­colleagues who disagree with my views”.

“We’re committed to fostering an environment of honest, searching and empathetic dialogue between colleagues, one where mutual respect is required of all,” Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy said in response on Tuesday.

The company declined to comment on many specifics of Weiss’s resignation letter.

Weiss also described the Times’s opinion section as a place where intellectual curiosity had become a liability. “Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold, only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world?” she wrote.

The Times’s opinion section came under fire last month for publishing an article by senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, that urged the US government to deploy military troops to deter looting amid protests sparked by the May 25 killing of George Floyd while in police custody in Minneapolis.

The piece was criticised by many Times reporters and editors, who said it endangered their black colleagues covering the protests and contained factual errors.

James Bennet, the Times’s editorial page chief, resigned shortly afterwards, and his deputy, James Dao, was removed from the company’s masthead and reassigned to the newsroom.

A few days before Bennet’s resignation, Weiss wrote on Twitter that a “civil war” had engulfed the Times newsroom between an older guard that supported civil libertarianism and a “woke” new guard that felt the comfort and safety of the individual trumped core liberal values.

“Here’s one way to think about what’s at stake: The New York Times motto is ‘all the news that’s fit to print’. One group emphasises the word ‘all.’ The other, the word ‘fit’ ” she wrote on June 4.

The argument elicited widespread public criticism from many of her colleagues, who called her interpretation misguided.

Other newsrooms have been facing staff protests concerning such issues as racial accountability, including Bloomberg News, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Washington Post.

In her resignation letter, Weiss wrote that she felt the Times had not learned the lessons of the 2016 presidential election, including “the importance of understanding other Americans.”

Instead, she wrote: “Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor.”

In a statement, Kathleen Kingsbury, acting editorial-page editor for the Times, said: “We appreciate the many contributions Bari made to Times Opinion. I’m personally committed to ensuring the Times continues to publish voices, experiences and viewpoints from across the political spectrum in the opinion report.”

Separately, Andrew Sullivan tweeted on Tuesday that this would be his last week at New York magazine as writer-at-large. He wrote: “I’ll be discussing the broader questions involved in my last column this Friday.”

Sullivan joined the magazine in 2016.

Similarly to Weiss, Sullivan has been at the centre of controversy for writing critically of what he argues is the curtailing of free speech on campuses and beyond, and what he describes as a hardening ideological orthodoxy taking hold in academia, at corporations and in civic society.

In a note to New York’s staff on Tuesday, editor-in-chief David Haskell wrote that the “decision to part ways was mutual”.

Sullivan couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.

Weiss has long been an outspoken critic of cancel culture — what critics describe as censorship attempts against ideas that stray from liberal orthodoxy — and has written about the #MeToo movement and foreign affairs.

Read Bari Weiss’ resignation letter in full:

Dear A.G.,

It is with sadness that I write to tell you that I am resigning from The New York Times.

I joined the paper with gratitude and optimism three years ago. I was hired with the goal of bringing in voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages: first-time writers, centrists, conservatives and others who would not naturally think of The Times as their home. The reason for this effort was clear: The paper’s failure to anticipate the outcome of the 2016 election meant that it didn’t have a firm grasp of the country it covers. Dean Baquet and others have admitted as much on various occasions. The priority in Opinion was to help redress that critical shortcoming.

I was honoured to be part of that effort, led by James Bennet. I am proud of my work as a writer and as an editor. Among those I helped bring to our pages: the Venezuelan dissident Wuilly Arteaga; the Iranian chess champion Dorsa Derakhshani; and the Hong Kong Christian democrat Derek Lam. Also: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Masih Alinejad, Zaina Arafat, Elna Baker, Rachael Denhollander, Matti Friedman, Nick Gillespie, Heather Heying, Randall Kennedy, Julius Krein, Monica Lewinsky, Glenn Loury, Jesse Singal, Ali Soufan, Chloe Valdary, Thomas Chatterton Williams, Wesley Yang, and many others.

But the lessons that ought to have followed the election — lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society — have not been learned. Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.

Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor. As the ethics and mores of that platform have become those of the paper, the paper itself has increasingly become a kind of performance space. Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. I was always taught that journalists were charged with writing the first rough draft of history. Now, history itself is one more ephemeral thing moulded to fit the needs of a predetermined narrative.

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m “writing about the Jews again.” Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by co-workers. My work and my character are openly demeaned on company-wide Slack channels where masthead editors regularly weigh in. There, some co-workers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post axe emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are.

There are terms for all of this: unlawful discrimination, hostile work environment, and constructive discharge. I’m no legal expert. But I know that this is wrong.

I do not understand how you have allowed this kind of behaviour to go on inside your company in full view of the paper’s entire staff and the public. And I certainly can’t square how you and other Times leaders have stood by while simultaneously praising me in private for my courage. Showing up for work as a centrist at an American newspaper should not require bravery.

Part of me wishes I could say that my experience was unique. But the truth is that intellectual curiosity — let alone risk-taking — is now a liability at The Times. Why edit something challenging to our readers, or write something bold only to go through the numbing process of making it ideologically kosher, when we can assure ourselves of job security (and clicks) by publishing our 4000th op-ed arguing that Donald Trump is a unique danger to the country and the world? And so self-censorship has become the norm.

What rules that remain at The Times are applied with extreme selectivity. If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinised. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.

Op-eds that would have easily been published just two years ago would now get an editor or a writer in serious trouble, if not fired. If a piece is perceived as likely to inspire backlash internally or on social media, the editor or writer avoids pitching it. If she feels strongly enough to suggest it, she is quickly steered to safer ground. And if, every now and then, she succeeds in getting a piece published that does not explicitly promote progressive causes, it happens only after every line is carefully massaged, negotiated and caveated.

It took the paper two days and two jobs to say that the Tom Cotton op-ed “fell short of our standards.” We attached an editor’s note on a travel story about Jaffa shortly after it was published because it “failed to touch on important aspects of Jaffa’s makeup and its history.” But there is still none appended to Cheryl Strayed’s fawning interview with the writer Alice Walker, a proud anti-Semite who believes in lizard Illuminati.

The paper of record is, more and more, the record of those living in a distant galaxy, one whose concerns are profoundly removed from the lives of most people. This is a galaxy in which, to choose just a few recent examples, the Soviet space program is lauded for its “diversity”; the doxxing of teenagers in the name of justice is condoned; and the worst caste systems in human history includes the United States alongside Nazi Germany.

Even now, I am confident that most people at The Times do not hold these views. Yet they are cowed by those who do. Why? Perhaps because they believe the ultimate goal is righteous. Perhaps because they believe that they will be granted protection if they nod along as the coin of our realm — language — is degraded in service to an ever-shifting laundry list of right causes. Perhaps because there are millions of unemployed people in this country and they feel lucky to have a job in a contracting industry.

Or perhaps it is because they know that, nowadays, standing up for principle at the paper does not win plaudits. It puts a target on your back. Too wise to post on Slack, they write to me privately about the “new McCarthyism” that has taken root at the paper of record.

All this bodes ill, especially for independent-minded young writers and editors paying close attention to what they’ll have to do to advance in their careers. Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril. Rule Two: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Rule Three: Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain. Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you’ll be hung out to dry.

For these young writers and editors, there is one consolation. As places like The Times and other once-great journalistic institutions betray their standards and lose sight of their principles, Americans still hunger for news that is accurate, opinions that are vital, and debate that is sincere. I hear from these people every day. “An independent press is not a liberal ideal or a progressive ideal or a democratic ideal. It’s an American ideal,” you said a few years ago. I couldn’t agree more. America is a great country that deserves a great newspaper.

None of this means that some of the most talented journalists in the world don’t still labour for this newspaper. They do, which is what makes the illiberal environment especially heartbreaking. I will be, as ever, a dedicated reader of their work. But I can no longer do the work that you brought me here to do — the work that Adolph Ochs described in that famous 1896 statement: “to make of the columns of The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.”

Ochs’s idea is one of the best I’ve encountered. And I’ve always comforted myself with the notion that the best ideas win out. But ideas cannot win on their own. They need a voice. They need a hearing. Above all, they must be backed by people willing to live by them.

SOURCE 

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here
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