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Ruth King

The media’s mad obsession with white supremacy It isn’t the Proud Boys who have been rioting for the past two months. by Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/10/01/the-medias-mad-obsession-with-white-supremacy/

EXCERPT

Trump and white supremacy have become the main talking points in the post-debate fallout. From CNN to the BBC, and of course across the Trump-loathing Twittersphere, all the talk is of why Trump won’t condemn the white-supremacist groups that are apparently tearing apart the soul of America. During the debate, Trump was asked if he would condemn the Proud Boys, the stupid right-wing gang founded by Gavin McInnes to defend Western values (if these chinless wonders are the last line of defence for Western civilisation, then we’re even more screwed than I thought). Trump said he doesn’t know who the Proud Boys are but he would be happy to condemn them if they are indeed white supremacists. They should ‘stand down’, he said, and ‘stand by’.

It is those last two words – ‘stand by’ – that have whipped up global fury and rejuvenated the chattering classes’ beloved pastime of Trump-bashing. See, Trump is a white supremacist, they’re saying. He is now openly calling on groups like the Proud Boys to ‘stand by’ (we’ll leave it to the time-rich, sunlight-deprived users of 4Chan and other sites to pore over the question of whether the Proud Boys really are white supremacists). No one allowed for the possibility that Trump misspoke or messed up his words, something he is quite famous for doing. And even his clarification of his comments – he has now said that the Proud Boys, whoever they are, should definitely ‘stand down and let law enforcement do their work’ – has not damped down the drama. Trump refused to condemn white supremacists because he is one, the tweeting classes claim.

Biden, who at this point will clamber upon any soapbox that comes his way, says America now has a president who is ‘refus[ing] to disavow white supremacists’. Big talk from a man who just a few weeks ago announced that any black person who is even thinking of voting for Trump is not really black. These are the double standards on racism in the woke era: Trump is a vile white supremacist for saying ‘stand by’ in relation to the Proud Boys, yet Biden is the great hope for civil rights in America despite his belief that all black people must think and vote in the exact same way or else forfeit their blackness. The broader point about that crazy, awful debate – the fact that Trump said ‘Sure, I’m willing to do that’ when directly asked if he is willing to condemn white supremacists – has been lost in all of this. Trump saying he is willing to condemn white supremacists has somehow morphed into proof that he supports white supremacists.

There is a bigger issue at play in the media elite’s obsession with white supremacist groups. It speaks to their alarming inability, or unwillingness, to face up to the real source of disarray and conflict in the US today. It isn’t white-supremacist groups who have taken part in the worst, most nihilistic riots to rock America for five decades – it is people who, right or wrongly, identify as ‘left’ or as ‘progressive’. It isn’t the Proud Boys who have laid waste to entire blocks in often quite deprived areas in Kenosha, Minneapolis and Portland – it is supporters of so-called ‘Antifa’ and of Black Lives Matter. It isn’t the Proud Boys who have harassed diners and stormed into suburbia calling people ‘motherfuckers’ and insisting that they bow down to the supposedly correct political worldview – it is the upper middle-class, often white supporters of BLM who have done that, most of whom will shortly be voting Biden for president.

Willing dupes are funding a toxic new racial grift industry

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/willing-dupes-are-funding-a-toxic-new-racial-grift-industry

Ibram X. Kendi, the author of How to be an Antiracist and Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas, recently gave a presentation to teachers and administrators in Fairfax County, Virginia. For his one hour of work, he was paid an astounding $20,000 in taxpayer money. That’s $333 per minute of his presentation.

On top of that, the school district splurged $24,000 to buy his books about critical race theory and to make them required reading for K-12 students.

This utter waste of money on ideological claptrap is, however, chump change compared to the lucre that sluices into Kendi’s pockets for his corporate work. Twitter’s Jack Dorsey donated $10 million to Kendi’s anti-racism center. Bank of America partnered with the law firm McGuireWoods to host a discussion with Kendi as part of its “diversity and inclusion” initiative.

So, yeah, anti-racism is great work, if you can get it. It would be a relief if it were only “money for nothing,” but actually, it is money for poison.

This summer, amid evidence of police brutality against black people in the United States, it has become trendy to react in ways that do nothing to advance the cause of reform. Reform is hard, and it is much easier for corporations, school boards, and other institutions to whitewash themselves by deliberately getting themselves scammed. So, they unaccountably pay outrageous sums (usually of other people’s money) to hucksters such as Kendi.

One Nation, Under Woke . By Richard M. Reinsch II

ttps://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/10/02/one_nation_under_woke_144356.html

Through the sweeping and indiscriminate indictment of oppression that it makes against the American republic, wokeism poses the first serious challenge to our constitutional democracy since communism. Wokeism aims to remake American constitutionalism root and branch, to transform economics, politics, education, and other institutions and practices. The free and equal individual under the rule of law will be replaced with monolithic voices, united by perceived oppression, who demand a mutating law and politics that reward their grievances with punishments against alleged oppressors and redistributed resources for supposed “victims.”

The first thesis of wokeism is that persons are reducible to their affiliated identity: above all, race or gender. In this view, we understand ourselves solely through these prisms and we apply that understanding to others and to institutions. The second thesis is that no person, no idea, and no historical account can be understood by independent human reason unfiltered by race, gender, and stories of interlocking oppression, or, as the case may be, by the acts of oppression one has shared in as a member of the dominant group. Everything comes to us and is either understood or projected by us through our racial or gender identity. The third thesis is that those who have identities that can be grouped under “persons of color” or LGBTQ possess greater authority to speak — owing to the various oppressions they have experienced and the cosmic redress required for justice and liberation —  than oppressor groups in almost every sphere.

America’s national DNA, according to the New York Times’ 1619 Project — wokeism’s anti-American document par excellence — has been encoded with slavery and anti-black racism. Indeed, America left the British Empire for the purposes of retaining the slavery regime, the project’s lead author Nikole Hannah-Jones proclaims (against historical evidence). White males stand as the grand artificer of this oppression, which has been transmitted throughout American history, informing our constitutional documents, politics, and social structures.

FINAL JOBS REPORT BEFORE ELECTION DAY SHOWS US EMPLOYERS ADDED 661,000 WORKERS IN SEPTEMBER BY ANDY PUZDER

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/september-jobs-numbers-andy-puzder

“There is simply no historical parallel for the magnitude and speed of the current economic recovery.”

Following the four best months for job growth since the government began tracking the data in 1939 — 4.8 million jobs in June, 2.7 million in May, 1.7 million in July, 1.4 million in August — the economy added an additional 661,000 jobs in September.

But for the four record-setting months that preceded it, September’s jobs numbers were the best since September of 1983 during the Reagan presidency. While this was a slowdown from four record-setting highs, keep in mind that the numbers slowed to a 37-year high.

There is simply no historical parallel for the magnitude and speed of the current economic recovery.

By comparison, the monthly high mark for job growth during the Obama-Biden recovery was 540,000 jobs in May of 2010.

In total, the U.S. economy has regained 11.4 million jobs or 55 percent of the 20.8 million jobs lost in April to the coronavirus – and that’s with many major states still at least partially shut down.

RACE IN AMERICA: SYDNEY WILLIAMS

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Bigotry in any form is ugly. Certainly, racism exists in individuals, but does institutionalized racism exist in the United States? This essay owes its origin to an interview with Kay Coles James, conducted by Nicole Ault in last weekend’s edition of the Wall Street Journal. The title was “On Being Black and Conservative.” Ms. Coles was in the second class to integrate her junior high school in Richmond, Virginia in 1961. Today, she is president of the Heritage Foundation. Could that have happened in a systemically racist country?

The concept of systemic racism stems from Critical Race Theory (CRT), which states that race, “instead of being biologically grounded and natural, is a socially constructed concept that is used by white people to further their economic and political interests at the expense of people of color.”[1]  Systemic racism is defined by Wikipedia as “the formalization of a set of institutional, historical, cultural and interpersonal practices within a society that more often than not puts one social or ethnic group in a better position to succeed, and at the same time disadvantages other groups in a consistent and constant manner, that disparities develop between the groups over a period of time.”

But does systemic racism exist in the U.S.? Certainly, there are individual racists, as well as anti-Semites, misogynists, xenophobes, homophobes, anti-Catholics and those infected with Trump Derangement Syndrome. To define the United States as systemically racist, however, connotes a conspiracy that does not appear to exist. In 1948 President Tuman signed an executive order committing the government to integrate its segregated military. The term “affirmative action,” affecting the hiring practices of government contractors, was first used in Executive Order No. 10925, issued by President Kennedy on March 6, 1961. Jim Crow laws (state and local laws enacted to maintain racial segregation) were abolished with the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned segregation in public places and prohibited employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed discriminatory voting practices, which had been in effect in many southern states since the end of the Civil War.

Chris Wray is Right: Antifa Is an Ideological Threat to the United States By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/antifa-ideological-threat-to-united-states/

His assessment marks a dramatic improvement in the FBI’s position on the very real and present threat of ideologically driven violence.

On Thursday, Jim Geraghty had a characteristically insightful Corner post discussing FBI director Christopher Wray’s recent characterization of Antifa on Capitol Hill. Jim observes that the director’s testimony will be (indeed, is being) distorted in the debate halls, congressional chambers, and media commentary because, well, that’s what we do.

The rap on Wray is that he resists framing Antifa as an “organization,” thinking it more accurate to depict it as a “movement” or an “ideology.” The problem is not just that he is being maligned for what was a more nuanced and accurate description than the commentary indicates. Beyond that, the commentary is missing entirely that his assessment marks a dramatic improvement in the FBI’s position on ideologically driven violence, which has been the most immediate threat faced by the United States for a generation. If the government is applying to international terrorism — i.e., jihadist terrorism — the same thinking that Wray described as the bureau’s approach to Antifa’s domestic terrorism, that is a significant security enhancement.

Wray is not denying that Antifa is infecting and driving violent anti-American anarchists. Those anarchists, he indicated, include collections that range from ad hoc groups of individuals who self-identify as Antifa to more regimented “nodes” that are “coalescing regionally.”

Does that sound familiar? It should. On a global stage, it mirrors in many ways the Muslim Brotherhood. Not a precise reflection, but it is similar (and bear in mind that these movements are in very different stages of their historical development).

American Jews should reject Joe Biden   By Judah Waxelbaum

Joe Biden has spent nearly 50 years on the political stage. In that time, he has repeatedly proven that he is no ally to Israel. The Biden platform is a delicate balance of establishment Democratic talk points when it comes to Israel. It is rare you get a candidate with this extensive of a political record; it would be criminal to ignore it. American voters must look past the campaign and focus on Biden’s time in the Senate and as vice president.

 In 1982, prime minister Menachem Begin testified in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Then-senator Biden told Begin that US aid to Israel could be cut off if actions in the West Bank did not cease.
 

Begin responded,

 “Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work. I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.”
 

Biden slammed on the dais, clearly angry with what Begin was saying. Begin continued,

 “This desk is designed for writing, not for fists. Don’t threaten us with slashing aid. Do you think that because the US lends us money it is entitled to impose on us what we must do? We are grateful for the assistance we have received, but we are not to be threatened. I am a proud Jew. Three-thousand years of culture are behind me, and you will not frighten me with threats. Take note: we do not want a single soldier of yours to die for us.”

Social Justice, Tikkun Olam and the Democrat Party Politics Diane Bederman

https://dianebederman.com/social-justice-tikkun-olam-and-the-democrat-party/

Judaism teaches that social justice includes leaving grain and produce during the harvest for the poor to glean in order to provide all people the dignity of work. A hand up and not a perpetual hand out.

“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the corner of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest.  You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger.” (Leviticus 19:9-11)

Our Jewish ethic teaches us that we have moral agency; free will; that we are the subject of our destiny and not the object of our fate. We are not the victims of circumstance because we choose our path, no matter the road blocks put in our way.

Yet, I watch and listen as Jewish people support a party that places multiple road blocks in front of those in most need of uplifting by promoting a welfare state: free stuff; free education, free health care, subsidized housing. It all sounds lovely, but for those whose hand is always out, there is no dignity; there is no moral agency.  I agree there is no dignity in homelessness or hunger but socialism is not the answer. We know this from history watching what happened in Cuba, Russia, and Venezuela, rich beyond belief, from oil, whose people are now unable to buy toilet paper. Socialism is evil. It is debilitating. It undermines dignity turning citizens into generational victims.

Dear Jews, listen to those less fortunate. Listen to the Latinos and Hispanics whose families fled socialist countries to come to America for the freedom to rise up and to fall down, knowing you could rise up again. Listen to them as they warn against socialism as preached by Bernie Sanders and shared by AOC.

EU Still Siding with the “World’s Worst Human Rights Abuser” by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16539/eu-iran-human-rights-abuse

“One day, I heard screams, shouting, and pleas for help in the police department…. I witnessed two officers who were dressed in unofficial uniform cursing and hitting Navid with batons and metal pipes with no mercy. They would tell him: ‘the truth is whatever we say, will you write what we are saying or not?’ Navid was… begging: ‘please, stop, please don’t hit me, I didn’t do anything.’ He covered his head with his arms. And one of the officers, whose name I later learned was Abbasi, hit Navid with such strength that Navid let out a gut-wrenching scream and fell unconscious”. — Witness to the torture of Iran’s wrestling champion, Navid Afkari, who was reportedly tortured into a false confession, then hanged.

Iran’s leaders most likely wanted to make an example of the highly respected wrestler, to impose fear in society, and send a strong message to the people that anyone who dares to protest can face severe consequences.

Did they hear about the four teenagers who will have their fingers amputated as a punishment for stealing, also, according to them, after being tortured until they “confessed”?

The European Union, in empowering a regime that is torturing and executing protesters and political prisoners, is making itself complicit in these crimes against humanity. Instead, the EU needs immediately to join the US in putting pressure on the mullahs and holding them accountable.

The European Union is openly siding with the ruling mullahs of Iran and attempting to scuttle US efforts to pressure the rogue regime to stop. Britain, France and Germany, on September 18, told the UN Security Council that the EU is strongly committed to ensuring the continued lifting of sanctions against the Iranian government. The three European powers added that, as far as they were concerned, even if the United States reimposes all sanctions, their UN sanctions relief for Iran would continue beyond September 20.

The EU has also been helping Iranian leaders to evade US sanctions through a payment mechanism labeled as INSTEX (Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges), which is designed to permit European firms and corporations to continue doing business with the Iranian government in spite of US economic sanctions against Tehran.

Iran: Can the U.S. Make Peace with the Mullahs? by Peter Huessy

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16582/iran-can-the-us-make-peace-with-the-mullahs

With regard to the JCPOA itself, Iran’s serious and continuing violations of the nuclear enrichment terms of the existing agreement reflect the true intentions of the mullahs, and clearly indicate that a new nuclear deal could not be implemented with any confidence: it would also be violated by Iran. Secretary Pompeo, in a statement posted on the Department of State’s website, noted that Iran has shown no willingness to live in peace.

Like other criminal cartels, Iran has operational arms, including the IRGC, Hezbollah and Hamas, to do its dirty work. In 2014-15, Iran’s terror proxy, Hezbollah, financed its terrorism through smuggling contraband cigarettes in the United States, and working with Venezuelan drug cartels to smuggle drugs and traffic in women and children. Revealingly, a nearly-completed law enforcement effort to take down Hezbollah’s cigarette smuggling ring was shut down by the Obama administration just before the 2015 JCPOA was concluded.

If anyone thinks that diplomacy can resolve such threats, one need not do any more than remember the diplomatic success Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had in preventing Nazi Germany from attacking Poland.

On Saturday, September 19, after months of futile diplomatic efforts to extend the UN ban on Iran’s purchase of advanced weapons, the Trump administration implemented “snap back” sanctions as set forth in the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). That action was taken, said U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, because “The Iranians are largely ignoring the most important components of the [nuclear deal] with respect to nuclear enrichment.”