The Racism of the ‘Anti-Racist’ Movement

Black Lives Matter protests led many people to want to do something useful to reduce racial injustice. Racial justice groups are being flooded with money. Big companies made multimillion-dollar donations.

“Bad idea,” says black radio host Larry Elder in my new video.  “It is condescending… and not helpful. I urge white people to chill. Stop helping us, because you’re making things worse!”

Making things worse, he says, because it supports the activists’ claim that “blacks are victims of racism. (But) if racism were in America’s DNA, Obama never could have got elected. Racism has never been more insignificant a factor in one’s success than right now.”

I push back. “It must be a huge problem or there wouldn’t be all this protest!”

“Well, they’re being lied to,” Elder responds. Teachers, black activists, and the media give “young people the impression that racism remains this huge problem in America when it is not.”

It’s not, he says, because today any person who does three things can succeed: “Finish high school, don’t have a kid until you get married, get a job. Do those things, you will not be poor.”

The biggest problem facing the black community today, says Elder, is the absence of fathers. In the 1960s, most black children were raised in two-parent households. That changed when our government’s war on poverty began.

The handouts sent the message that it’s the government’s job, not your responsibility, to take care of you and your kids. “A mother with two children makes more money than she would make on minimum wage because of all the goodies she gets through the welfare state!”

Now, he says, Black Lives Matter actually encourages the breakup of families. Their website does say, “disrupt the Western-prescribed, nuclear family.”

That’s a Karl Marx idea straight from “The Communist Manifesto.” Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors proudly describes herself as a “trained Marxist.”

Elder calls her and the anti-capitalist protesters “phonies.”

“Do they really want socialism?” Elder asks. “Do they really want inferior products? They are all wearing Nike and using Apple products. They’re hypocrites.”

But they’re winning!

They are even redefining what racism means. Today’s “anti-racists” say racism means “any policy with an effect that is disproportionate.” So even a tax deduction is racist because on average, whites deduct more than blacks.

“Anti-racism presumes things about the world that simply can’t be true,” says Kmele Foster, lead producer at Freethink. “We are all at bottom, whatever our race, individuals. Anti-racism takes that and flips it on its head.”

Recently, Washington’s Museum of African American History and Culture, part of the taxpayer-funded Smithsonian Institute, posted that “white culture” means things like “nuclear family,” “self-reliance,” “rigid time schedule,” and “delayed gratification.”

The poster is “despicable,” says Foster. “It’s offensive to suggest that black people can’t aspire to or possess all the values outlined in a document like this. Black people can be punctual. Black people are, in fact, successful in this country.”

The poster was removed, after complaints.

I wanted to ask Black Lives Matter about things like that. We contacted all 14 U.S. chapters. Not one would agree to an interview.

Too bad. I wanted to ask the “anti-racists” if they notice that they and white supremacists now support similar segregationist policies, like blacks- (or whites-) only spaces. Foster points out that both white supremacists and anti-racists believe “race is an immutable attribute of who we are.”

He prefers Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision: a nation where “people are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

“Black Lives Matter leaders don’t really want the vision of MLK,” says Elder. “They want a color-coordinated society—as long as they’re the ones who do the coordinating.”

SOURCE 





Woke anti-Semitism: Why do so many prominent ‘anti-racist’ activists rub shoulders with Jew-haters?

The September 2020 edition of British Vogue is, as one would expect of a fashion magazine, visually pleasing. The cover displays a striking monochrome shot of footballer Marcus Rashford and model Adwoa Aboah in all their finery, astride a red typeface which reads: ‘ACTIVISM NOW – THE FACES OF HOPE.’ In the issue’s feature piece, Brit(ish) author Afua Hirsch honours a selection of anti-racist activists she deems ‘remarkable’.

But what’s striking about some of them is their proximity to anti-Semites. In the piece, Hirsch heaps praise upon former Women’s March organiser Tamika D Mallory, who famously refused to condemn Louis Farrakhan. Farrakhan is the longtime leader of black-supremacist sect Nation of Islam. He has publicly referred to Jews as ‘bloodsuckers’ and ‘termites’. For decades his sect has distributed propaganda claiming that Jews control the economy and were responsible for the Atlantic slave trade.

Hirsch describes 2020 ‘as a year that shredded complacency’. Yet her own spotlighting of morally dubious ‘anti-racist’ activists demonstrates the woke congregation’s appalling complacency regarding anti-Semitism. Why is it that someone like Hirsch, who tirelessly campaigned for the removal of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square for its connotations of historical racism, is happy to laud living, breathing activists with ongoing links to Jew-haters?

Anti-Semitism is a real problem on the woke left. The so-called Forever Family Force, which marched in Brixton recently as part of a reparations demonstration, made headlines for its paramilitary-style gear. Since then it has been revealed that FFF leader Khari McKenzie has made a series of anti-Semitic posts. Like Farrakhan, he blames Jews for slavery and has described the Jewish community’s alleged role in the slave trade as ‘the original holocaust’. Unsurprisingly, McKenzie was also quick to jump to grime artist Wiley’s defence after his anti-Jewish Twitter tirade last month.

This troubling undercurrent in progressive activism is an inevitable product of an intersectional ideology that labels certain groups as innately ‘privileged’, and thus evil, and others as eternally ‘oppressed’, and therefore virtuous. Jews (and indeed, truth itself) are mere collateral when it comes to the woke mission to deconstruct an allegedly evil society. And regrettably, this woke anti-Semitism is very much in vogue.

SOURCE 






'Kamikaze Academics' and a lesson for today from the Bible

The teachings of Jesus are filled with paradoxes, but none is more paradoxical than this: “whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25). As expressed in another passage, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:24-25). This is a cardinal, revolutionary principle, and by understanding it and implementing it, we can overcome the cancel culture.

But what, exactly, does this principle mean in our practical, day to day lives? An Australian professor, Dr. Peter Ridd, fired by his university for telling the politically incorrect truth, has coined a term that says it all. He calls it “Kamikaze Academics.”

As explained by James Delingpole, “Kamikaze Academics will comprise professors like himself willing to get themselves fired for expressing opinions which go against the standard leftist narrative — and in doing so, expose how little free speech and diversity of thought there now is in academe.”

This is the practical application of the teachings of Jesus, fleshed out here in the academic world. You speak the truth and live the truth, regardless of cost or consequences. In the process, you save your integrity even if you lose your job. As a result, you become free (in the words of Jesus, “you find your life”).

In contrast, if you try to save your job and preserve your reputation, refusing to question false narratives and choosing to compromise your convictions for the sake of your career, you actually “lose your life.” You become a slave to the system, a slave to peer pressure, a slave to the dollar, a slave to the approval of people, a slave to expediency rather than principle.

Dr. Ridd himself suggested that, “It’s only older academics like me who can do this. We have a duty to do this so that younger academics can have a proper academic career where they can say tough things or even stupid things and still be forgiven. You need to be able to make mistakes.”

But the call must be much broader. Both older and younger academics must speak the truth. The oppressive system must be challenged. To be silent is to enable.

More broadly still, beyond the world of academia, we must all determine to stand up and speak out and be witnesses to the truth, regardless of cost or consequence.

That doesn’t mean that we abandon practical wisdom. There is a time to speak and a time to refrain from speaking.

And that doesn’t mean that we cultivate pride and arrogance as if we couldn’t care less about what others think. To the contrary, we are called to humility, to be peacemakers rather than troublemakers.

But we must have the mentality of spiritual revolutionaries, understanding that we are here for something greater than earthly pleasures, here for a purpose that transcends the goals of ordinary life. We are here to be witnesses, to make an eternal difference, to live lives that count, both in this age and the age to come.

As a result, we are willing to sacrifice something temporal to gain something eternal. In the words of missionary martyr Jim Elliot, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”

Strikingly, while in college, Elliot journaled this prayer: “Father, take my life, yes, my blood if Thou wilt, and consume it with Thine enveloping fire. I would not save it, for it is not mine to save. Have it Lord, have it all. Pour out my life as an oblation for the world. Blood is only of value as it flows before Thine altar.”

And this: “God, I pray Thee, light these idle sticks of my life and may I burn for Thee. Consume my life, my God, for it is Thine. I seek not a long life, but a full one, like you, Lord Jesus.”

Elliot, martyred by the Auca Indians at the age of 28 in 1956 saw his prayers answered dramatically. And while he did not live a long life, he certainly lived a full life, one that continues to speak and make an impact long after his passing, one like that of Jesus Himself.

Of course, the vast majority of us will not face the test of literal martyrdom. But there are many “deaths” we will be called to die in our daily obedience to God. That’s why I devoted an entire chapter to the theme, “To save your life is to lose it” in my forthcoming book Revolution: An Urgent Call to a Holy Uprising.

It is a fundamental, revolutionary principle set forth by Jesus, and it is something we must live out in the home, in the workplace, on the campus, and online. And yet, in contrast to the original practitioners of “kamikaze,” the Japanese pilots who gave their lives to kill others, we give our lives to liberate and help others. We are here to save people’s lives, not destroy them.

The moment we take hold of this reality, that by losing our lives we find our lives, the cancel culture, along with the larger culture of peer pressure, loses its power. The moment we take hold of this, we are free.

Dr. Ridd is living this out in the world of academics, where he is in a pitched court battle with the university that dismissed him.

Let us each live this out in our own worlds, regardless of cost or consequence. By losing our lives, we will find them.

SOURCE 





Joe Biden on Gun Control: Understanding Biden's 2020 Platform and the Second Amendment

The one-two punch of the Wuhan Coronavirus explosion, and the civil unrest of early 2020, led to an unprecedented growth in firearms ownership in America. All told, there were about two million firearms sold in the month of March 2020 alone. Between March and July, an additional three million were sold, with about half of those happening in the month of June.

Ammunition sales have similarly spiked, with record sales occurring on this website. However, gun owners don’t need a report to know that there has been a massive surge in demand for ammunition. They need only go down to their local gun store and see that all of the most common rounds are in short supply, sold out or being rationed at the point of sale.

But it’s not just guns and ammo. There has also been a significant increase in the number of Americans obtaining their concealed carry weapons permit and packing on a daily basis. Forbes magazine estimates that 20 million Americans are now carrying as part of their everyday life.

The flipside of this is that Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign has been perhaps the most radically anti-Second Amendment campaign on record. Former Vice President Biden is very proud of his role in spiriting the 1994 gun ban into passage. If he’s elected, we will see an expansion of the power of the federal government and attacks on the rights of Americans that will not be restricted to the ownership of firearms. As president, Biden would resume the Obama-era attacks on the suburbs ended by President Trump, give citizenship (and voting rights) to nearly 30 million illegal aliens and use the Federal Reserve to address a “racial wealth gap.”

However, Biden’s desire to erode the Second Amendment deserves special attention. It is a radical agenda that will gut the right to bear arms in this country. Does that sound like bluster and hyperbole? It’s not.

There are two ways to determine how a potential President Joe Biden would govern with regard to the Second Amendment: What he says and what he has done. As Joe Biden has been out of government since 2017, we will start with his history as a legislator and as Vice President of the United States.

Joe Biden has a very long record of being anti-Second Amendment. He voted for the 1986 Firearms Owners Protection Act, which was primarily a series of gimmes to gun grabbers in exchange for getting the ATF to leave law-abiding gun owners alone. If you’ve ever wanted to own an M-16, but can’t afford one because of the high price of the related tax stamp, you can thank Joe Biden for that.

Biden was also instrumental in the passage of the Brady Bill. This law, until the creation of the NICS background check system, provided for a five-day waiting period to purchase a firearm. He brags about his role in passing this bill into law on his campaign website, saying “In 1994, Biden – along with Senator Dianne Feinstein – secured the passage of 10-year bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. As president, Joe Biden will defeat the NRA again.”

Far more concerning, however, is that, as a Senator, Joe Biden literally wrote the bill that banned so-called “assault weapons” in the United States for 20 years. This assault weapons ban defined “assault weapons” in an extremely broad sense.

Much more HERE 

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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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