https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-near-call-whether-the-left-will-implode-or-triumph_3754081.html?utm_source=partner
Here’s a question that I do not know the answer to: “Is the Left on the Cusp of Permanent Triumph, Or Is It Committing Suicide?”
That’s the title of an essay by Francis Menton at his blog Manhattan Contrarian.
Menton points out that the sudden acceleration of “cancel culture” and social media “de-platforming” are only two arrows in the Left’s quiver of intimidation.
Another weapon—more bludgeon than arrow, perhaps—ratchets up the Left’s “coercive suppression of dissent” to new, Soviet or Chinese Communist levels of ferociousness.
One main tactic is the universalization of diversity imperatives. The whole “diversity” gambit was always noxious because it never had anything to do with fostering genuine diversity—which requires a sedulous fostering of dissenting opinion and open debate about contentious issues.
On the contrary, the diversity racket was always about enforcing conformity and ideological purity.
The difference now is that what had been confined to a few administrative proclamations and particular “consciousness raising” classes has metastasized and is poised to dictate the emotional and ideological weather of entire institutions.
This development was possible only because of the Left’s “long march through the institutions.” It began in the 1960s with a handful of outside agitators.
It gained steam in succeeding decades as activists slipped into more and more positions of power—administrators as well as faculty. The puzzle was completed and fully weaponized when the government stepped in and backstopped the radicals.
Bureaucratic Instruction
They didn’t necessarily look like radicals. Many of the examples that Menton adduces are just ordinary academic administrators who, in embracing the poison of woke ideology, have trampled all over the ideals of individual rights, due process, and fostering an atmosphere where substantive, fact-based argument, not racial grievance mongering, could thrive.