RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/israel/2023/10/the-management-of-savagery-part-ii/

The dedicated proponents of the anti -Zionist cause in Palestine, Lebanon and across the Middle East have over the last two decades carefully exploited mainstream media outlets such as Sky News, the BBC and CNN, those media organs’ studied neutrality, and the fear of being labelled “Islamophobic”. As  Abu Bakr Naji’s definitive guide to the management of savagery maintained, the Islamist cause  must never overlook the importance of ‘political work’ while also understanding the West’s ‘political game’.[1] The spider’s house of the West is fragile and can fragment. The Management of Savagery thus distinguishes between military strategy and media strategy while planning for the effects of these strategies, as in the wake of a successful attack like the recent barbarous assault on Israel. In particular, the Islamist agenda exploits the West’s open borders, sympathetic media and multicultural tolerance to advance, pro-Palestine and pro-Islamist causes. Sympathetic fifth columnists infiltrate the army, police, civil institutions and, in particular, the media and secondary and tertiary educational institutions. The media and higher education’s woke embrace of the non-Western ‘other’ render them particularly congenial to pro-Palestinian and antisemitic manipulation.

Thus as events in Israel and Gaza unfold, an all too predictable narrative begins to take shape on what Bernard Henri Levy termed the “zombie Left”. Almost as soon as news of the operation occurred, BBC World News trotted out an expert from Chatham House who deplored the Islamist attack but nevertheless contended Israel’s treatment of Palestine and the desperation of its inhabitants apparently left them with little alternative but ‘resistance’. The BBC, of course, eschews the use of the pejorative ‘terror’ to describe the savagery Hamas unleashed. In the ensuing days it became something of a trope in the West’s mainstream media and eleemosynary institutions to opt for moral equivocation and a specious relativism. The attack, soi-disant experts opined, had little to do with ideology; rather, it demonstrated, perhaps too brutally, a necessary reaction to Israeli oppression which the West had for too long duplicitously condoned. Demonstrators immediately appeared outside the Israeli embassy in London chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’. The Scottish National Party refused to raise an Israeli flag outside the Scottish Assembly in Edinburgh. In Sydney a gathering outside the Opera House chanted ‘Gas the Jews’. Meanwhile across the Pacific, more than 30 student organizations at Harvard University endorsed a letter shamelessly blaming Israel for the attacks.

We should recall that before critical race theory there was critical terror theory — a perverse form of deconstruction that found the West, its colonialism, orientalism and Islamophobia responsible for all the problems in the post-Cold War order. This particular species of Western self-loathing first came to the fore in the aftermath of 9/11, but assumed prominence following the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Over two decades it has undermined any objective study of terrorism on Western campuses from Aberystwyth in Wales to Queensland in Australia, taking in Harvard on the way. Sedulously promoted across the Anglosphere as a fashionably progressive take on terror that empathises with the misunderstood resistance of the non-West, critical terror theory now permeates not only academe but the mainstream media journalists trained in its discipline over the past twenty years.

https://media5.manhattan-institute.org/iiif/2/wp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F5%2FThe-Censorship-Bureaucracy.jpg/full/!99999,960/0/default.jpg

In a recurring sketch from a popular early 2000s U.K. comedy show called Little Britain, a bank clerk listens to customers’ queries, randomly types on a keyboard, and then deadpans the catchphrase: “computer says no.” Whatever the follow-up questions, no matter how angry or upset customers become, the response remains the same: “computer says no.” This skit lives on in Britons’ collective psyche mainly because it is funny, but also because it points to a familiar sentiment: the frustration of finding oneself stonewalled by an intransigent bureaucracy.

The sketch came to mind earlier this year when the Canadian Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (SAFS) invited me to give its annual guest lecture. The venue was to be the public library in London, Ontario. I titled my talk “Sex, Gender, and the Limits of Free Speech on Campus” and looked forward to the occasion. Then, without any apparent sense of irony, the library cancelled my lecture with one emailed sentence: “As per the library’s policy governing room rentals, we are not able to approve the rental request.” Computer says no.

After much nudging, library staff revealed the specific policies I had unknowingly breached. My lecture was considered “likely to be in violation of library policy, including, but not limited to, the library’s rules of conduct, charter of library use or workplace harassment and sexual-harassment prevention policies.” More specifically, there was allegedly “a risk or likelihood of physical danger to participants or the audience or misuse of the property or equipment.” Finally, my speech might “negatively impact or impede the ability of others to enjoy the services and facilities of the library, and/or library operations.” Thankfully, SAFS managed to find an alternative venue, and my speech was recorded, so listeners can gauge for themselves whether I posed a risk of sexual harassment or physical danger.

Looking back at this event now, what strikes me most is the faceless, bureaucratic nature of censorship. No individual was bold enough to say: “I do not like what you have to say and I am going to prevent you from saying it.” Rather than taking responsibility for the decision to stop me from speaking —and, importantly, to prevent people from hearing what I had to say—library officials hid behind selected quotations from institutional policies. This cowardly approach gives bureaucrats plausible deniability when accused of censorship. Worse still, it allows them to appear almost apologetic: “We support free speech but, unfortunately, policy says no.”

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2023/05/22/the-danger-to-canada-and-how-it-differs-from-the-danger-to-the-u-s-n1697272

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity — Martin Luther King Jr.

The danger to Canada, writes industrial technologist and army veteran Tex Leugner in The Cochrane Eagle, transcends the state-and-media entente that works to prepare the public for the assumption of elite authority predicated on an ideological agenda. The danger, rather, is delved in the almost insuperable task of “restor[ing] the necessary common sense and good judgment to a lazy, unthinking electorate” prone to electing corrupt, unpatriotic leaders, “a citizenry capable of entrusting an incompetent man with the job of Prime Minister” and refusing to rectify or even acknowledge the blunder: “The danger to Canada is the people in it.”

Election results confirm, Leugner continues, “that more and more Canadians are moving in the direction of socialism with every generation, most of whom no longer have any morality, sense of self reliance, personal responsibility, independent thinking and a willingness to continue the culture of hard-working self-respect that built this magnificent country in the first place.” His conclusion hits hard. “Canada is no longer the country I was once so proud to serve as a soldier. In fact, it is no longer my country.” Many former servicemen, some of whom have become personal friends, agree wholeheartedly. They regret their service, risking life and limb for a country that has neither use nor respect for them, particularly under a Liberal administration.

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2023/04/evil-triumphs-when-conservatives-are-silenced/

Tucker Carlson being sacked by News Corp is a blow. I’d trimmed my regular intake of conservative television news and commentary to Tucker and to Andrew Bolt. Tucker was brave, effective, charismatic and popular. That’s presumably why he had to go. There’s speculation about the trigger for his demise. Exposing the January 6 ‘insurrection’ hoax? That or anything else would be a pretext. The dark side hit back. Cancelling is its forte. Getting rid of the presenter who attracted the largest audience is a message to lesser lights.

Bolt is often very trying. On promoting the COVID jabs, for example. On his one-eyed support for Zelensky, on cancelling Mark Latham, on a predilection for being wishy-washy on other things I can’t remember, but remember switching him off. Still, he is absolutely excellent on the racist Voice, on the climate scam, and on the Stolen Generations myth. All striking at the very heart of national life. On the latter, he seems to me to be alone in having the enormous courage to state the truth, so far as it can be discovered, and quite often too. I might have missed it, but I haven’t heard any of his conservative colleagues on Sky take the same stand. Evil triumphs when conservatives stay silent. Mind you, speaking up can get you thrown to the wolves — a cause for anxiety if you have a large mortgages.

Tucker was anything but silent. The demonic Dems hated him. He threw light on their nefarious doings. And, like cockroaches, they don’t like the light. Am I being too harsh? I don’t believe so. How else do you describe those who support flooding and crippling the country with uncontrolled masses of economic asylum seekers, untrammelled abortion to the point of delivery, gender reassignment surgery for teenagers, the sexualisation of children in classrooms, transgender activism, critical race theory, debilitating and discriminatory affirmative action, nobbling free speech, setting the law on political opponents, turning a blind eye to rioting and looting, turning violent criminals back onto the streets, and whatever other evil takes their fancy?

https://rufo.substack.com/p/the-anti-normative-society?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1248321&post_id=116087757&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

The most potent line of attack from radical Queer Theory is the discipline’s assault on so-called sexual “normativity.” This is the basic pattern throughout the academic literature and the various subfields that have been inspired by the general thrust of this ideology.

First, you have Queer Theory itself, which provides a ruthless criticism of what it calls the “cis-normative” society, the “heteronormative” society, and the male-female gender binary that underpins it. Then you have a number of derivative subfields, such as fat studies, which provide a ruthless criticism of healthy human proportions, and disability studies, which provides a criticism of well-adjusted, psychologically integrated people. The general idea is that these are norms, promoted by society and reinforced by the economic system of capitalism, that appear to be oriented toward health, reproduction, and psychological integration, but, in fact, are used as a mechanism of oppression against non-normative groups—for example, people who don’t fit into the gender binary or the heterosexual social ideal.

If we break it down further, we see that Queer Theory makes an implicit two-part argument. On the surface, you have a relativistic argument, which says that normative ideals are arbitrary social constructs, and, contrary to the traditional view, society can prioritize either the normative or non-normative at will. In other words, there is no inevitable human hierarchy. On the contrary, these structures are all reproduced through oppressive systems and should be ruthlessly interrogated and deconstructed because, ultimately, none of them have a monopoly on human value.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-transgender-childrens-crusade

If you’re unfamiliar with Jazz Jennings, you’re missing one of the paradigmatic characters of early-twenty-first-century America. Jazz—this isn’t her birth name, for reasons that will become clear—was a boy born to a southern Florida couple in 2000. Nothing was unusual about his infancy; but by the time he was two, he was showing a marked preference for clothing and toys ordinarily chosen by girls: mermaids, princesses, all things pink—the whole shebang. Soon, he began insisting that he was a girl. His mother remembers him asking when the good fairy would come and turn his penis into a vagina. His “gender dysphoria,” as the medical world calls an emotional alienation from one’s sexed body, continued to trouble him until his parents decided to let him adopt a new name and pronoun, wear girl’s clothes, and present himself as a girl, a process known as social transition. At his fifth birthday, he debuted his new identity: “I got to wear the sparkly bathing suit for my party. I was a girl,” Jazz recalled later.

Transphobia in the United States is said to be ubiquitous and deadly, but for Jazz and family, transition presented extraordinary opportunities. In 2007, Jazz and her mother were interviewed by Barbara Walters. After that, a documentary, I Am Jazz: A Family in Transition, aired on the Oprah Winfrey Network. A best-selling book, I Am Jazz, was next; it has a place on the shelves of school libraries around the country and an award from the American Library Association, and it has been the occasion for public readings in schools, churches, and other community centers. In 2015, Jazz’s career reached its pinnacle. The TLC network launched a reality-show series starring Jazz and her family; it’s now in its eighth season. That year, Johnson & Johnson also named Jazz a spokesmodel for its Clean & Clear skin-care line. In 2018, she designed a bra in partnership with Knixteen, a teen underwear company. She is a much-in-demand LGBTQ influencer, with millions of followers on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. She was signed by Creative Artists Agency, representatives of Anne Hathaway, Sandra Bullock, and other A-listers. The coup de grace in her rise came when she received an acceptance letter to Harvard. We don’t know how much she has earned from some of these seemingly lucrative enterprises, but it’s safe to say that her Harvard tuition shouldn’t be a problem.