The new Puritans

Those of us who have taken a critical stance on the culture war in the hope of hastening its demise have often been misinterpreted as attempting to prolong it. For a considerable period of time, most people were happy to dismiss such matters as the niche obsessions of trolls prowling the dark recesses of the internet, or over-zealous students hankering after a cause. In the green days before the coronavirus lockdowns, it was tempting for commentators to hold fast to the received wisdom that the culture war was merely a distraction advanced by unscrupulous politicians. My appearance on The Big Questions took place a month before the global chain reaction of coronavirus lockdowns, and three months before the death of George Floyd and the subsequent protests. Were the debate to be replayed today, it is unlikely that my perspective would be deemed marginal. Few would now deny that the culture war has exploded into the mainstream, and all of us are implicated, whether we like it or not.

The question of whether or not ‘wokeness is the new religion’ is unlikely to feature as a topic for debate these days. For all its flaws, the analogy is now commonplace and many pundits speak freely of ‘the religion of social justice’ without any need for further qualification. Culture warriors of all stripes have become increasingly doctrinaire and sectarian. Many of them favour slogans as a substitute for thought, almost as a form of holy writ. They have their own esoteric language, originating in largely outdated postmodernist jargon, and enshrined in foundational holy texts by the likes of thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, or the intersectional theories popularised by Kimberlé Crenshaw. And although heretics are unlikely to be burned at the stake, their inquisitors are convinced that non-believers must convert for their own good.

All of this amounts to the legitimisation of bullying on a grand scale. American physicist Steven Weinberg famously remarked that ‘with or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil – that takes religion’. When the puritans descended on churches across the United Kingdom in the mid-seventeenth century, destroying paintings, statues, stained glass, and any other images deemed offensive to their creed, they were not necessarily doing so out of a juvenile relish for vandalism. Many believed that they were undertaking God’s work, and that their values should be imposed on the populace for its own sake.

So too our latter-day puritans, who are happy to demolish the problematic monuments of the past, and scour social media for prey, like so many vultures circling their barely breathing lunch. They are the clergy for the digital age, an elite class that claims to know what is best for the unlettered plebeians. The trouble with all such righteous causes is that they attract the bullies who seek an approved outlet for their baser instincts. Some don the sacerdotal robes out of a sense of duty, others as a disguise.

Social media is the playground turned battlefield for these online crusaders. Here they pontificate to the masses, berate those who fall short of their moral expectations, and endlessly trawl through old tweets or Facebook posts in the hope of discovering a misjudged phrase or sentiment that could justify a campaign of public shaming. In their eyes, there is no possibility of redemption. The most vicious remarks you will find on social media come from the racist far right and intersectional activists. They are two faces of the same chimera. Identitarians on the right and left have an interdependent relationship; each one nourishes and sustains the other.

That is not to suggest some kind of moral equivalence. One of the most tragic aspects of this movement is that many of its acolytes are well-meaning. Yet unlike the culture warriors of the far right, who are universally despised in civilised society, the ‘woke’ religionists have positioned themselves as being ‘on the right side of history’ and therefore enjoy major institutional support. In spite of being capable of the most horrendous dehumanising behaviour, many of them believe themselves to be ‘the good guys’. With this paradox in mind, the prospect of putting an end to the culture war seems Sisyphean. How does one tackle a bully who bullies others in the name of love?

These cultural revolutionaries are engaged in an ongoing collective effort to destabilise and reorganise society around their ideological principles, underpinned by the conviction that the powerful – defined solely by group identity – are unaware of the structures that they unwittingly perpetuate. In this battle, however, the chief antagonists consider themselves to be under siege. In this perverse formulation, the defence of liberal principles is taken as an attack. This is why those who object to these radical and divisive societal upheavals are so often accused of ‘starting a culture war’, when they are simply responding to it. The new puritans are brawlers with a persecution complex, wildly throwing punches at strangers and then blaming them for the bloodstains on their hands.

We hardly even know what to call the movement, because this culture war is largely being waged through the subtle – and sometimes not-so-subtle – redefinition of language. The new puritans have become adept at the reapplication of existing terms that deviate from their widely accepted meanings. Phrases such as ‘social justice’, ‘anti-racism’, ‘liberalism’, ‘whiteness’, ‘violence’, ‘safety’, and endless others, now bear connotations that are understood only by a minority of activists. They have apparently taken their cues from Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass (1871). ‘When Iuse a word’, he says to Alice, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less’.

When most of us say ‘social justice’, we mean the concept of equality under the law, opposition to prejudice and discrimination, and equal opportunities for all. When social justice activists say ‘social justice’, they mean an emphasis on group identity over the rights of the individual, a rejection of social liberalism, and the assumption that unequal outcomes are always evidence of structural inequalities. When most of us say that we are ‘anti-racist’, we mean that we are opposed to racism. When ‘anti-racists’ say they are ‘anti-racist’, they mean they are in favour of a rehabilitated form of racial thinking that makes judgements first and foremost on the basis of skin colour, and on the unsubstantiated supposition that our entire society and all human interactions are undergirded by white supremacy. No wonder most of us are so confused.

For the logomachists of the new puritanism, the ambiguity is the point. Where there are no shared definitions there can be no possibility of discussion. This strategy of destabilising language and its meaning enables the well-versed to befuddle the layman with jargon, thereby giving vacuous theories the impression of substance. Moreover, the ambiguity can act as a get-out clause to make statements that are otherwise bound to be interpreted as hostile. This is why the Cambridge academic Priyamvada Gopal can write phrases such as ‘Abolish whiteness’ and ‘White Lives Don’t Matter. As white lives’, and then blame those who are offended for being insufficiently schooled. That is not to suggest that she is insincere in her views, but one can appreciate from this example how such buzzwords can be readily exploited by those with an agenda.

So it has come to this. Liberalism is akin to Nazism. Words are violence. Debate is a fetish. We have somehow found ourselves in this mystifying scenario in which self-declared ‘liberals’ are advancing an illiberal agenda, ‘leftists’ are failing to stand up for left-wing ideals, ‘social justice’ means the opposite of what it says, and ‘anti-racists’ are creating a more racist society. The old definitions no longer apply. Culture warriors of all political affiliations play high-stakes word games, and truth and rationality are the casualties. We are dealing with a rapidly developing religion, albeit one of the secular kind, whose abstruse language and peculiar rituals are as incomprehensible to us as the miracle of transubstantiation must have been to a medieval congregation. This is a contemporary form of hocus pocus: we are tasting wine while the clergy assures us it is blood.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/09/how-the-culture-war-became-a-crusade/

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Communism and Fascism were never really defeated

The proof is everywhere. Schools have become transmission belts for self-loathing propaganda. Teachers’ unions indoctrinate children through required-reading textbooks, anti-capitalist teachings, critical race theory and the vilification of Western society. Indoctrination has replaced informed discussion.

Degeneracy and promiscuity have become accepted as ‘normal, natural and healthy’. Pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and TV are part of everyday life. Censorship is reserved for politically incorrect ideas and expressions.

Social religion has largely replaced Christianity. The Bible is discredited and its believers mocked for needing a ‘religious crutch’.

History is being rewritten by cancelling the past and creating ‘national myths’ for guidance rather than relying on the ‘barren intellectualism’ of science and rational thought. George Orwell’s assertion that, ‘Who controls the past controls the future’, has never been more true.

Courts have been politicised with judges weakening legislated intent with technical decisions based on human rights and victimhood.

Much of this post-war success has been prosecuted through the media. Ideological control of editorial writing, book reviews and student newspapers has been achieved. Key positions in radio, television and film are now filled with sympathetic presenters, actors and producers. Today’s mainstream and social media, along with Hollywood and the arts, are dominated by activists.

And, after 60 years of insidious cultivation, the ideological takeover of the bureaucracies is all but complete. They have become self-serving, inward-looking, collectives pursuing political agendas for which they have no popular mandate. Accountability is inversely proportionate to the size of government.

Even the military has been captured.

While Marxism has been the main driver, Australia’s socialist march now has fascist overtones. The state panders to minorities at the expense of the white majority. Corporate Australia has become increasingly subservient to the state through the enforcement of environmental, social and governance protocols. The labour market has become a legal construct.

China’s fingerprints are everywhere. Encouraged by a complicit West, President Xi Jinping has bought, charmed and bullied his way into global institutions like the United Nations and the World Health Organisation. Australia has not escaped his attention. Many prominent Australians are on Chinese payrolls and Beijing actively funds and supports fifth columnists whose intentions are inimical to Australia’s unity and prosperity.

According to President Xi Jinping, ‘Economic globalisation (Chinese hegemony) is the trend of the times. Though countercurrents are sure to exist in a river, none could stop it from flowing to the sea.’

While President Xi may claim to be a Leninist, he actively fosters the cult of personality, promotes Han superiority, persecutes minorities, controls business and finance and belligerently projects China’s military might. Under the guise of reunification he seeks to annex Taiwan. These characteristics make him more Mussolini and Hitler than Lenin and Marx.

Xi has cultivated elites like Christiana Figueres, the former UN climate change supremo who once lauded China as a ‘constructive leader’ on climate policy. Yet it is difficult to reconcile her words with Beijing’s construction of 43 new coal-fired powers stations and its upping coal production by 300 million tonnes a year.

Beijing is equally dismissive of its World Trade Organisation obligations and, despite its appalling record, is a member of the Human Rights Council.

Xi’s fascist ally, World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab, along with many world leaders and billionaire elites, have seized on Covid-19 as the catalyst for ‘the re-imagining of capitalism’. They are recruiting brainwashed youths to perform the role of Hitler’s Brownshirts.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/09/the-elites-united-will-never-be-defeated/ ?

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JK Rowling condemns masked pro trans mob after violent clashes in Brighton at 'Let Women Speak' event

The Left very quickly resort to violence

JK Rowling has slammed pro-trans protesters for 'throwing smoke bombs' and 'howling abuse at lesbians' after police arrested two people over clashes at a 'Let Women Speak' event.

Kellie-Jay Keen, who founded women's rights group Standing For Women, was due to give a talk in Brighton today as part of her countrywide speaking tour.

Ms Keen, also known as Posie Parker, has frequently attracted the ire of pro-trans activists over her views on gender rights.

Her talk today was disrupted by protesters from the Reclaim Pride Brighton group, who vowed to 'bring flags and noisemakers' while advised to 'cover their faces'.

It led to a clash between pro-trans and women's rights supporters, with pictures showing police dragging two people away from the scene.

A line of police officers had to separate the rival groups, with many wearing black masks.

Ms Rowling, who has repeatedly come under fire for her public views on trans issues, today slammed the pro-trans group for the clashes.

She tweeted: 'I see the Be Kind brigade are once more hiding behind their black masks, throwing smoke bombs, screaming "scum" at women speaking up for their sex-based rights and howling abuse at lesbians for not doing d**k.'

Police made two arrests during the clashes after smoke bombs were let off in the crowds.

One person remains in custody on suspicion of assault and a second on suspicion of obstructing an officer.

The Harry Potter author, 57, since she mocked an online article in June 2020 which used the words 'people who menstruate' instead of 'women'.

She has been targeted by trolls after making critical comments about the transgender lobby - including protesters standing outsider her home with placards after her address was posted online last year.

Ms Keen, meanwhile, told MailOnline earlier this month that her events had been hit by a number of threats and warnings.

She spoke out after officers from Sussex Constabulary were alerted to a number of menacing messages against her.

They included many branding Ms Keen - who is also known as Posie Parker - a TERF and urging people to 'Fight her by any means you see fit'.

She told MailOnline: 'I have been called a Nazi for saying I don’t think women have penises. Once you can portray someone as the most heinous person in society – a Nazi – I guess anything goes.

‘I have had a lot of threats over the years, I have been told about how they hope my children get cancer.

'Sadly, it’s not unusual for trans activists to issue threats about women wanting to talk about our rights – JK Rowling is a prime example of that.

‘We are subjected to a wide range of menacing messages.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11224705/JK-Rowling-condemns-masked-pro-trans-mob-violent-clashes-Let-Women-Speak-event.html

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Diversity "training" -- aka brainwashing

It is not just young and impressionable university students who are being compelled to attend virtual re-education camps before being permitted to proceed with their degrees, but also older and considerably less impressionable members of society whose university days are but a distant memory. Apparently, you can never be too long in the tooth to have your thinking checked.

It has recently come to light that volunteers at the State Library of Western Australia have been on the receiving end of a passive aggressive email which ‘encourages’ them to take part in an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island cultural awareness training module. If for any reason, said volunteers decide to decline the offer, their names will be put on a list of troublesome dissenters, and they can expect a phone call asking them to explain why it is they are bigoted racists.

According to the recipient of the communication, this is not the first woke imposition that staff have had to endure. The question is, how long will it be until the library does what the Art Institute of Chicago did last year, which was to shut down its volunteer program and fire more than 150 white unpaid staff in the name of ‘equity and diversity’?

As it turns out, this kind of coercion is quietly taking place within numerous Australian organisations. Staff at the Department of Prime Minster and Cabinet, Gold Coast Health, the Fair Work Ombudsman, Libraries Tasmania, City of Melton, and the Royal Life Saving Society have also been compelled to undertake an Indigenous Cultural Training module developed by the SBS Inclusion Program.

A few of the model’s components will teach you how to ‘recognise the importance of spirituality in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures’, to ‘grasp the impact of colonisation on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ and to ‘comprehend the trauma felt by the Stolen Generations and the intergenerational trauma still being felt today’. Finally, it will you give you the ‘tools to move forward in the reconciliation process as both an individual and a business’. This module it seems, works wonders. It promises that in just half an hour, you will be transformed from a knuckle-dragging, cultural philistine into a fully enlightened and culturally proficient human being.

Clearly however, the Royal Life Saving Society has decided that half an hour of cultural competence training simply won’t do the trick. Under the guise of ‘Diversity and Inclusion’, it directs interested parties to a LinkedIn page which is a veritable smorgasbord of identity politics, critical race theory and radical gender theory. Among the offerings are six hours and thirty minutes of ‘Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging for all’, 28 minutes of ‘unconscious bias,’ 55 minutes of ‘using gender inclusive language’, 15 minutes on how to fight gender bias at work, and 3 hours and 52 minutes of ‘how to engage meaningfully in allyship and anti-racism’. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

It goes without saying that not one of these training modules is designed to teach you how to swim, spot a rip or develop techniques in advanced resuscitation. They are specially designed to train you to think in a different way, to alter your attitude and to question your beliefs. They are, to all intents and purposes, meant to brainwash you. This is a recalibration, designed to shift your loyalty from one moral code to another through hours and hours of relentless, mind-numbing ‘training’.

In his book A Time to Build, Yuval Levin puts forward a theory that when institutions fail to fulfil their essential roles in society and instead focus on trivial matters outside their remit, trust in them declines. The basis for Levin’s thesis is a distinction between formative institutions serving a social role and performative institutions that only provide a stage for partisan politics. As Levin notes, ‘When we don’t think of our institutions as formative but as performative – when the presidency and Congress are just stages for political performance art, when a university becomes a venue for vain virtue-signalling, when journalism is indistinguishable from activism – they become harder to trust. They aren’t really asking for our confidence, just for our attention.’

The revelation that Ambulance Victoria spent $760,000 on diversity officers while 33 Victorians died because there were not enough people to take emergency calls makes that particular institution very hard to trust indeed.

There has not been a push by the Victorian public for Ambulance Victoria to spend countless hours on obscure theories about gender, power, and race. Rather, the orders to pursue the woke agenda have come from the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, which was handed down in March this year in a diabolically lengthy Volume II of its ‘Workplace Equality in Ambulance Victoria’.

The reason why employers are pursuing this agenda so vigorously is because they have the full support of the permanent political class occupying government agencies and departments. There is no way that Ambulance Victoria would be focusing on ‘unconscious bias’ and ‘diversity and belonging’ if the government was not leading by example.

Australian governments ought to be the custodians of a rich liberal democratic tradition of freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and equality before the law. The federal government has also expressed its commitment to these values in international law, by becoming a signatory of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). Article 18 of the ICCPR outlines a signatory’s commitment to protect the right of individuals to think freely and entertain ideas and hold positions based on conscientious, religious, or other beliefs.

This entails protection against brainwashing or indoctrination. Agencies such as the Australian Human Rights Commission have been specifically established to uphold these values.

But instead of defending the civil and political rights of individuals, the AHRC has become one of major proponents of radical and divisive ideologies which have become the established norm in the public service, and are now taking root in the private workplace.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/09/quick-somebody-call-a-diversity-officer/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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