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QuoteCritical Social Justice has some intellectual underpinnings in "critical" neo-Marxism, but it is mostly grounded in postmodern notions of power, knowledge and language, which view society as constructed of oppressive systems of power and privilege that legitimize some forms of knowledge over others, which then creates ways of speaking about things—discourses—that perpetuate the oppressive power structures. Most people, it argues, are blithely unaware of those oppressive discourses and need theorists and activists to reveal them to us.

CSJ manifests in current scholarship as postcolonial and decolonial theory, Critical Race Theory, queer theory, intersectional feminist, disability and fat studies or simply as (Critical) Social Justice Scholarship. It appears in activism as a drive to decolonize everything, see whiteness and white fragility everywhere and scrutinise language for evidence of transphobia, ableism and fatphobia. It is colloquially referred to as wokeism to indicate an awareness of the oppressive power structures of white supremacy, patriarchy, imperialism, cisnormativity, fatphobia etc. that the majority of us are sleepwalking through.

QuoteOn Activist Scholarship: An Interview with Helen Pluckrose

In recent years, free speech and inquiry have come under attack on college campuses, ethical relativism has spread, and demands to decolonize syllabi and rid them of canonical white male texts and thinkers have become increasingly common. Hostility to reason, objectivity, and Enlightenment universalism now disfigures some social science and humanities departments, and these alarming ideological trends have trickled down into mainstream culture where they affect the lives of ordinary people.

In their book, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody, Helen Pluckrose and James A. Lindsay look at how postmodern theory and activism have come to replace traditional scholarship, and the threats these anti-Enlightenment beliefs pose to liberal democracy. I caught up with Pluckrose, an essayist and editor of Areo magazine to discuss her book. She lives in England.

Quote(...) The book covers a lot of territory from postcolonial studies, to critical race theory, fat studies and disability studies, queer theory, feminism and gender studies and, of course the philosophical rubric that ties them all together: postmodernism: First, can you tell our readers Why you and James Lindsay decided to write this book now? Postmodernism has been around in our universities for a long time. Why the sudden urgency?

(...) The reason the pushback is suddenly so much more evident to people outside the universities is because the current manifestation of postmodern ideas of power, knowledge, and language is Critical Social Justice (CSJ) scholarship and activism. CSJ's influence has increasingly been being felt much more broadly than just in the universities. Books like Kendi's How to be an Antiracist and DiAngelo's White Fragility are best sellers. People are being no-platformed, fired, and cancelled for disagreeing with these ideas. (...) Since the brutal death of George Floyd and the BLM protests, my colleagues and I have been inundated by requests for assistance from individuals whose employer, university or children's school is trying to impose mandatory "antiracist" training of a thoroughly illiberal kind rooted in critical race theory ideas about invisible systems of whiteness underlain by bad science about "implicit bias." We have had to set up a Discord server to try to triage this and help people convince their employers to allow them to reject racism from their own philosophical, ethical or religious beliefs and not this highly theoretical and political one. It is important to note that people of all races object to this kind of "antiracist" training and that black people are politically and intellectually diverse. Similarly, many women reject intersectional concepts of feminism, few LGBT people have even read queer theory, the majority of trans people just want to be left alone to live as feels authentic and most obese and disabled people have no wish to take this aspect of themselves on as a political identity.

QuoteDefine for our readers the four or so basic tenets of postmodernism and why having spawned so many disciplinary satellites you regard it as the danger that it is?

The postmodern ideas that have survived into the successive waves of "theory" culminating in Critical Social Justice are rooted in an understanding of knowledge as a product of power perpetuated by discourses. (...) The critical theorists exist to deconstruct these discourses and make their oppressive nature visible. This results in the breakdown of boundaries and categories through which we understand things like emotion and reason, fact and fiction, male and female. It also produces a profound cultural relativism and a neurotic focus on language and language policing as well as a rejection of individuality and humanism in favor of identity politics. This is a problem because of the resulting threats to freedom of belief and speech, the divisive tribalism and the rejection of science, reason and liberalism.

QuoteI am always wary of speaking in terms of attacks on the "West" because postmodernism, CSJ and the kind of postcolonial and decolonial theory that forms part of it is very much a Western phenomenon. It doesn't really have much of a presence anywhere else yet. Meanwhile, the antidote to it—science, reason, and liberalism—are values held by people everywhere. However, it is fair to say that postcolonial theory and postmodernism generally demonizes the West as a colonial, white supremacist, capitalist dystopia. Its greatest threat is to science and rigorous empirical research and its problematization of all historical figures and drive to "decolonize" knowledge.

QuoteIs there hope in the academy for a renaissance? Will reason, logic, rational discourse, and a commitment to universal liberal values prevail? Or have things turned an irreversible corner? Are these activist scholars and their work national security threats?

(...) However, I do think we should not underestimate the current threat. I don't think it would be going too far to say that what we are witnessing right now is an attempted cultural revolution. I don't think it can win in the long term because it is too irrational and self-contradictory and results in circular firing squads. The big question is what will push it back? My fear is that it will be a populist, anti-intellectual, anti-equality movement from the Right and that this would be just as illiberal as Critical Social Justice and could actually roll back advances made for racial, gender, and LGBT equality.

Quote(...) It amuses me that I am currently accused of being far-right by social justice types because, before I criticized CSJ, I focused on religious irrationalism and illiberalism and then I was accused of being far-left because I focused most on Christianity. However, I became far-right as soon as I extended the same criticisms to Islam. (...)

QuoteThe Truth According to Social Justice—A Review of 'Cynical Theories'

(...) Even when 150 artists and writers signed an open letter in none other than Harper's Magazine, decrying "a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity," the response from many has been to mock these concerns and dismiss them as "paranoid," or "privileged."

The backlash to the Harper's Letter comes on the heels of John McWhorter's thesis that anti-racism is a new religion, David French suggesting that a secular fundamentalist revival is occurring on the Left, and Andrew Sullivan asking whether "intersectionality [is] a religion?" In short, there is indeed something of a militant crusade that lies at the heart of what Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay call "Social Justice in Action," the title of chapter nine in their sensational new book, Cynical Theories, which explains "How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity―and Why This Harms Everybody."

(...)

The book explains a half-century arc of intellectual history culminating in our current state of histrionic overreach in the name of social justice. Cynical Theories superbly exposes a history of ideas which, in challenging unifying narratives and universal values, have come to threaten free speech, honest debate, and the valuing of reason itself.

The story begins in universities and culminates in the dogmas of Social Justice. However Pluckrose and Lindsay do not suggest that working towards a more just society is an unworthy cause. They argue instead that the crusade marching in the name of critical social justice is often not about social justice at all. It is about a nakedly illiberal set of cynical theories that find their origin in the ideas of postmodern intellectuals dating back to the late 1960s. These ideas have coalesced into a central thesis which posits that truth, knowledge, and morality are so wrapped up in discourses of power and privilege that they must be understood as socially constructed rather than as the fruits of objective inquiry. In the words of Robin DiAngelo, "there is no objective, neutral reality."

If there is a mantra for postmodernism the denial of objective reality would be it. (...)

From the opening pages, one gets the sense that Pluckrose and Lindsay have immersed themselves in every noteworthy work of postmodern scholarship available. They begin by identifying two postmodern principles and four postmodern themes. The postmodern knowledge principle refers to a "radical skepticism about whether objective knowledge or truth is obtainable and a commitment to cultural constructivism." The postmodern political principle is the "belief that society is formed of systems of power and hierarchies, which decide what can be known and how." The four postmodern themes are: (1) the blurring of conceptual boundaries such as that between health and sickness or truth and belief, (2) the power of language to construct reality rather than to merely articulate the intent of an author or an objective reality that we can discover, (3) cultural relativism, and (4) the loss of the individual or a universal human nature in favor of compilations of socially constructed intersectional identities.

(...)

This summary necessarily oversimplifies a half-century of evolving ideas. Indeed, Pluckrose and Lindsay devote six of their 10 chapters to explaining how these ideas have morphed and mutated, beginning with postcolonial theory, and working their way into queer theory, several waves of feminism, gender studies, disability and fat studies, critical race theory, and intersectionality. They demonstrate an impressive erudition as they analyze postmodern texts to uncover the meaning of things like standpoint theory, epistemic violence, and positionality, and explain how social justice scholars resolve the contradiction between "radical relativism and dogmatic absolutism" by favoring "interpretations of marginalized people's experience" which are "consistent with Theory" while explaining away all others as an internalization of dominant ideologies or cynical self-interest.

(...) In this phase, social justice activism treats Theory as reality, and thus as the one and only way to view and interpret reality.

And so what we are left with is "The Truth According to Social Justice." Teaching, write Pluckrose and Lindsay, "is now supposed to be a political act, and only one type of politics is acceptable—identity politics, as defined by Social Justice and Theory." In this third phase, postmodernism pushes into everything, applying its deconstructive methods everywhere in the task of creating social change. Not without noticing the inherent irony, they observe that "postmodernism has become a grand, sweeping explanation for society—a meta-narrative—of its own." As such, it functions as a set of pre-existing theories into which activists shoehorn the situational intricacies of experience. This has led to the dogmatism we see in militant social justice activism, "a tradition of faith that is actively hostile to reason, falsification, disconfirmation, and disagreement of any kind."

QuoteAs Theory developed, however, reasonable and humane concerns about oppression and marginalization mutated into an ideological virus spreading through scholarship and society (...) The Truth According to Social Justice abandons the liberal commitment to reason, science, and debate as a failure to "decolonize" our minds from the influence of Enlightenment institutions erected to benefit straight, white men. In sum, politics matters more than truth.

What Cynical Theories expresses is not a paranoid state of mind. It is a genuine concern about the threat that social justice activism, identity politics, and the legacy of postmodernism poses to Enlightenment liberalism and the belief that "disagreement and debate [are] means to getting at the truth." The book explains how we have arrived at a state in which social justice scholarship treats the principles and themes of postmodernism as The Truth, where no dissent is tolerated, and anyone who disagrees must be cancelled.

QuoteIs Critical Social Justice the Biggest Problem in the World?

I have always disagreed with people who liken the aims of Critical Social Justice (CSJ) activism to those of communist regimes. Last year, I still believed that, unlike communism, which has a clear end game of seizing the means of production for the proletariat, CSJ cannot become totalitarian because it is too contradictory, divided and irrational and too often operates like a circular firing squad since its proponents often lack a common goal.

(...)

However, over the over the past six months, it has become clear that CSJ can become totalitarian. Beginning in 2019, factionalism within CSJ has been gradually replaced by hierarchies. First, white women ceased to be a priority: the white women's tears and Karen memes demonstrated their fall from oppressed to oppressor. White gay men also fell foul of the system by frequently failing to be woke and lesbians were automatically suspected of being TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists). Asians, Jews and Hispanics became "white adjacent" because large numbers of them failed to espouse Critical Race Theory. Over the last six months, the idea of combating anti-blackness and transphobia has taken centre stage and, with it, totalitarian aims to revolutionise society by abolishing the police, compelling white people to confess their inherent complicity in white supremacy and punishing and silencing anyone who disbelieves in the queer and gender theories behind trans activism.

It should be clear by now that there is a genuine and serious problem here that affects the real world, not just the ivory tower and a few mad activists. There is ample evidence of Critical Race Theory and trans activism being imposed on the workplaces, universities and schools of average people. Anyone still claiming that the Social Justice left is just a few fringe loons must be wilfully blind.

(...)

Nevertheless, Critical Social Justice is a legitimate danger to liberal secular democracies.

We are in the midst of an attempted cultural revolution. This must be acknowledged, understood, faced head on and defeated.

People who anticipate that CSJ could evolve into something akin to a Maoist revolution complete with struggle sessions are not conjuring this possibility out of nowhere. Many people within the movement strongly advocate such a scenario and they enjoy a public respectability that right-wing authoritarian extremists do not. Neither are people wrong to think that Trump would oppose CSJ over-reach more forcefully than Biden will. Biden may not oppose it at all. This doesn't make Trump a likely saviour of liberal, secular democracy, however.

(...)

This all adds up to a recipe for disaster unless the liberal left acts fast to publicly discredit Critical Social Justice and assert an alternative worthy of respect. At the same time, an ethical conservative right needs to reject populist conspiracy theories and post-truth narratives in favour of a rational and consistent conservatism that has integrity.

The question now is not which side is worse but: How can we, making common cause with people from both left and right, defend the values of liberal secular democracies, including freedom of belief and speech and respect for science and reason, and push back the ideological lunacy before it spirals out of control and takes all of us with it?

Quote from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinkingCritical thinking is the analysis of facts to form a judgment. The subject ... generally include the
- rational,
- skeptical,
- unbiased analysis, or
- evaluation of factual evidence.

Quote from: nochWunder on 16.12.2020, 16:42:29
Näitä pukkaa koko ajan lisää. Nimiä ja käsitteitä. Ne voidaan tiivistää termillä alistustyökalut.

Kriittinen rotuteorian, intersektionaalinen feminismin ja tämä kriittisen sosiaalisen oikeuden taustalla on kehittää yliopistoissa välineitä joilla voidaan tieteellisessä viitekehyksessä luoda ihmisten sortovälineitä.  (...)

QuoteIt appears in activism as a drive to decolonize everything, see whiteness and white fragility everywhere and scrutinise language for evidence of transphobia, ableism and fatphobia.

QuoteHostility to reason, objectivity, and Enlightenment universalism now disfigures some social science and humanities departments, and these alarming ideological trends have trickled down into mainstream culture where they affect the lives of ordinary people.

QuoteCSJ and the kind of postcolonial and decolonial theory that forms part of it is very much a Western phenomenon. It doesn't really have much of a presence anywhere else yet. Meanwhile, the antidote to it—science, reason, and liberalism—are values held by people everywhere.

Quotemock these concerns and dismiss them as "paranoid," or "privileged."

QuoteIn this third phase, postmodernism pushes into everything, applying its deconstructive methods everywhere in the task of creating social change

Quote from: zupi on 16.12.2020, 19:52:31
Itse ymmärsin nuo kirjoittelut siten, että tämä CSJ:ksi nimetty teoria olisi se, mikä on "soluttautunut" ja muuttanut kaikki nuo yksittäiset "sosiaalisen oikeuden" liikkeet sellaisiksi paskatunkioiksi, mitä ne nykyisin ovat. Sinänsä nuo kaikki liikkeet lienee sellaisia, mitkä on aikoinaan alkaneet jostain ihan todellisesta tarpeesta / hyvästä tarkoituksesta, mutta ajan myötä muuttuneet sitten täysin toisenlaisiksi. Jos tuo ymmärrykseni on oikea, niin sitten voikin kiinnittää huomiota esim seuraaviin kohtiin:

Quote from: zupi on 16.12.2020, 19:52:31
Mielestäni tuota paskaa on alettu käyttää myös esim. pakolaisten/"turvapaikanhakijoiden"/maahanmuuton ja ilmastonmuutoksen vastaisten toimien kohdalla. Näilläkin molemmilla siis lienee ollut joskus aikoinaan ihan hyvä tarkoitus, mutta nyt ne on jalostettu noilla CSJ:n teeseillä ihan täysin muuksi. Suhtautuminen on sama, jos yrität selittää, ettei nykyisin länsimaissa suunnitelluilla toimilla näiden asioiden suhteen ole juuri mitään tekemistä järjen ja alkuperäisen tarkoituksen kanssa, verrattuna siihen, ettet ole valmis lankeamaan polvillesi tunnustamaan synnynnäistä rasistisuuttasi: Olet natsismusrassismus, joka ei välitä paskaakaan muista ihmisistä, oman kotimaan lapset mukaan lukien (jotka tulevat myös siis kärsimään hyvin pian hyvin kauhean kuoleman sinun kusipäisyytesi vuoksi).

Ja tästä päästäänkin sitten siihen, että kaikilla noilla liikkeillä tehdään nykyisin rahaa. Tai tarkemmin sanoen, rahaa siirretään tavallisten kansalaisten taskusta ihan muihin taskuihin. Maahanmuuton kohdalla rahantekorahansiirto taisi jo nousta vähän uudelle tasolle, mutta varsinainen kruununjalokivi on tietenkin ilmastonmuutoksen vastaiset toimet. Siksipä ne toimenpiteet pitääkin länsimaissa tehdä mahdollisimman typerillä ja kalliilla tavoilla. Ja eri mieltä olevat teilataan kunnon CSJ-tyyliin välittömästi.

Quote from: zupi on 16.12.2020, 19:52:31
En vaan edelleenkään usko, että tuo paska olisi levinnyt näin laajalle, ja edelleen leviäisi, ellei sillä olisi tosi isojen mätäpoikien ja -tyttöjen tuki. Ja tuon tuen syynä ei todellakaan ole mikään oikeudenmukaisuus. Luulenpa myös, ettei ilmastonmuutos ole sekään viimeinen asia, jonka kohdalla tuota sontaa käytetään kaiken (järkevän) vastustuksen eliminointiin.


Noiden hullujen ja superrikkaiden / valtaeliitin perverssin liittoutuman ymmärtäminen on vain jotenkin helpompaa, jos tuo CSJ ei kirjoituksen mukaisesti perustu kuin pieneltä osin marxismiin.

Quote from: sancai on 16.12.2020, 21:56:22
... hulluuden vähättely ...

Quote from: Sator Arepo on 16.12.2020, 17:58:08

(...)

Useimmille suosittelen New Discourses -sivustoa (https://newdiscourses.com/), jolla on myös YouTube-kanava (https://www.youtube.com/c/newdiscourses/videos). Siellä käydään näitä juttuja läpi suodattaen pois tuo tahallinen vaikeaselkoisuus, yksinkertaistamatta niitä kuitenkaan liikaa.  (...)

QuoteWokeness Threatens the Rule of Law

QuoteHere are two important ideas that currently exist in fundamental opposition to one another: "Reasonableness" and "Wokeness."

In advanced legal systems, we depend upon the concept of "reasonableness" and specifically a standard known as the "reasonable-person standard." This simply asks: what would be reasonable in, or what would a reasonable person make of, a given situation?

On the other hand, the "applied postmodern" ideologies that we refer to as "Wokeness" or "Critical Social Justice Theory" posit a concept of radical subjectivism and socialization into power-laden biases. In this worldview, there is no such thing as a "reasonable person,"  (...)

These ideas are wholly incompatible with one another. (...) they therefore present a significant threat to the very rule of law that makes liberal societies like ours possible — to say nothing of securing equal rights for all citizens.

It should be enough, then, to point out merely that the Woke ideology is both gaining significant amounts of power on nearly all levels — social, cultural, institutional, and legal — and is wholly inimical to the legal foundations of a free, liberal society filled with citizens who are equal under and before the law. In fact, just pointing this out should constitute an emergency for all classically and traditionally liberal-minded people, left, right, and center. The fact of the problem, however, raises an even darker specter that needs to be reckoned with as well: what would the Woke replace reasonableness and the reasonable-person standard with, if they gained enough means to do so?

The answer, as it always is with the Woke, is power that suits them and disenfranchises those who disagree with them. In place of reason, we would be given Critical Theories, mostly of identity, and our legal structure would have to be reorganized around these new principles.  (...) Our entire legal landscape would be reinterpreted under the assumptions that these unjust applications of systemic power are permanent so long as the system lasts, and therefore need constant redress.

(...)

These critical principles would also include the idea that the only people who make any sense are those who have a credible claim upon having experienced systemic oppression (...)

Under these assumptions, our legal system will corrupt itself into an identity politics-based replica of the worst failures of history, those in which some ruling capital-P Party becomes the basis for the law and its standards. That is, these assumptions aren't just wholly incompatible with the idea of a free and liberal society, they are the guarantor of its replacement by a totalitarian ideology and Party designed to be favored by it.  (...)

QuoteHow Wokeness Undermines The Constitution

Quote"We live on stolen land." So we're told – repeatedly – and so we're increasingly forced to repeat to ourselves in public-facing "land acknowledgments." Solidifying this spurious message is one of the primary objectives of the Critical Theory of Postcolonialism. It is echoed in Critical Race Theory, which reminds us ad nauseum of an even more inaccurate claim that the American economy was built on stolen labor through the institution of slavery. To the casual observer, these narratives might spur reflective thought or even a critical consciousness, or they might only induce an eye roll, but they have a far more sinister application that can be seen quite clearly when one understands the subversive method of political activism employed by Critical Theory ("Woke") activists.

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects individuals in our society from illegal search and seizure of property without probable cause and a duly issued warrant consistent with it. It does not apply to stolen property. Suddenly, then, in the instant the popular Woke narrative above is juxtaposed with this idea, the property rights ensured by the Fourth Amendment come crashing down around us even while their guarantor remains fully intact and in precisely the same black and parchment print it has always been.  (...)

Put another way, as the Woke narratives about society and its "true" machinations gain sway, the fundamental protections of the Bill of Rights will increasingly be subverted. They will not be done away with but will be reinterpreted in total according to the usual double standards the Woke so successfully employ for themselves everywhere they gain the power to do so. This will happen without the need to change a single word.  (...)

Unlike traditional civil rights discourse, which stresses incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law. (p. 3, third edition, emphasis added)

It isn't just the Fourth Amendment that can be subverted and repurposed to a Critical double standard within the purview of the Woke ideology, then. Equality, legal reasoning, rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law are all on the chopping block. Thus, any policy or contract can be manipulated in similar fashion, either by changing the meaning of the terms used in writing it or by changing the context in which they are to be understood. It is the latter of these that we see able to be employed against Fourth Amendment protections in the United States.

Consider the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects against self incrimination and ensures due process of law.  (...)

Given the context, this could turn the Thirteenth Amendment into a Woke weapon of ferocious power—as wouldn't a fitting punishment for complicity in a system that enabled and profited from slavery be some involuntary servitude, once one is duly convicted by a Woke court? The Eighth Amendment would offer no protection against this as a "cruel and unusual punishment," as that idea risks being interpreted under a Woke rubric where one's privilege mitigates or even eliminates the authenticity of one's suffering.

There's no harbor in the Sixth Amendment either (...)

This line of thinking could extend to almost anything, applying to any number of laws, policies, contracts, and even the text of the Constitution and its Amendments—even without changing a word of them (as they are seeking to do in California currently). The Nineteenth Amendment, guaranteeing no abridgment of suffrage based upon sex, is frequently attacked in Woke circles for being racist (...)

That is, even the Constitution offers us uncomfortably little protection against Woke totalitarianism as the Woke gain cultural hegemony and, as a result, control over ever more levers of power. Theirs is a war waged at the levels of interpretation, meaning, and context, and until we stand up firmly against their empowerment, we risk finding out in very disquieting ways just how crucial those can be.

QuoteThus, any policy or contract can be manipulated in similar fashion

QuoteClimate change is also a racial justice problem

QuoteNormally, I use this column to respond to questions from readers about climate change. But — amid our ongoing national reckoning with racism prompted by the unequal impacts of the covid-19 pandemic, the recent killings of African Americans at the hands of police, and 400 years of history — this was the question on my mind.

(...)

Racism is "inexorably" linked to climate change, said Penn State meteorologist Gregory Jenkins, because it dictates who benefits from activities that produce planet-warming gases and who suffers most from the consequences.

(...)

In a course he teaches called "Climate Change, Climate Justice and Front Line Communities," Jenkins traces this connection from slavery, which created the economic foundation for the industrial revolution, to modern-day policies that influence where people live and environmental risks to which they are exposed.  (...)

Racial inequality also means that the people most at risk from climate change have the fewest resources to cope. (...)

"Unless inequity is addressed now," Jenkins said, "future impacts from climate change will disable many communities of color."

(...)

"These same exploits that are causing climate change on a massive scale ... are causing very immediate health problems in areas inhabited by black and brown people," Newsome said. "You can't afford to not care about it when you're part of these marginalized communities."

(...)

Meanwhile, kids of color are spearheading America's youth climate movement. A Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll in 2019 found that at least twice as many black and Hispanic teens participated in school walkouts on climate change than their white counterparts; they were also more likely to say people need to take action in the next year or two.

"Climate change is the most immediate threat for the marginalized people of this country and of the world," Newsome said. "But that also means we are the most quick to act."

The world of climate activism has historically been dominated by white men, (...)

"Seeing the incredible disproportionate impacts, the flooding, the heat," she continued, "young people are saying, 'That is wrong. We have to do something about it.'"

QuoteEnvironmental justice means racial justice, say activists

QuoteCoronavirus has emphasised health, social, economic and environmental inequalities facing BAME people

QuoteTackling systemic racism is fundamental to achieving environmental and climate justice, according to leading activists, as Covid-19 disparities and the global uprising against police brutality lay bare the ramifications of racial inequalities in every sphere of life.

A wave of protests demanding an end to racist policing have taken place in towns and cities across the world amid mounting evidence that brown, black and native communities have also been disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Increasingly, experts and protesters have identified racial injustice as the common denominator in police violence, as well as environmental and health inequalities linked to poor Covid-19 outcomes. And on the streets, what started as Black Lives Matter protests have morphed into a movement for racial justice amid growing recognition that systemic racism denies people of colour equal access to economic, social, environmental and climate justice, as well as health equity, political power, civil rights and human rights.

(...)

As the crowds have grown, so have demands for radical reforms.

"Racism is built into America's DNA, and since 1619, black Americans have had to endure this violent and oppressive system ... Covid 19 exposed our nation's racial divide," said Robert Bullard, distinguished professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University and co-chair of the National Black Environmental Justice Network (NBEJN).

(...)

"Environmental racism kills, air pollution and rollbacks to environmental protections and regulations make it hard for black people to breathe. At NBEJN we are connecting the dots," said Bullard.

Globally, the environmental and climate movement has long faced criticisms of failing to understand the crucial role of racial justice in terms of both impact and solutions.

(...)

The UK has lagged behind. But widespread protests in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement have also evolved into a reckoning with Britain's racist past and present - including within the environmental movement.

(...)

Income inequality and job insecurity also play a part. Kissi-Debrah says black people in the UK are less affluent than other ethnic groups, and less likely to be able to spare time for meetings, protests or lobbying actions.

(...)

"If you look globally at what happened to climate, a disproportionate amount of blame does need to go to the global north, especially the former colonial powers. Environmental reparations are owed," said Krishnan. "And more thought needs to be given to solutions. The idea of carbon offsets simply reinscribes colonial frameworks."

(...)

"In recent weeks, the protest movement is really helping. People are more open to listen. It made people realise the US is not the only country with a systematic problem of racism," she said. "We need a moment to really think how we relate to one another... The toxic system is something that we all have to live with."

(...)

"To the white people who care about maintaining a habitable planet, I need you to be actively anti-racist. I need you to understand that our inequality crisis is intertwined with the climate crisis. If we don't work on both, we will succeed at neither."

Quote from: sancai on 16.12.2020, 21:56:22
Itse näen tämän ns. social justice-aatteen marxismista kehittyneen kulttuurimarxismin eli kriittisen teorian ja postmodernin käsitevääntelyn fuusioitumana.

(...)

QuoteNaming the Enemy: Critical Social Justice

Over the last few years, it has become apparent that, for whatever nobility and moral worth lies in the project called "social justice," something has gone badly wrong with the ideological movement on the far left that repeatedly calls for—or, more accurately, demands—it.  (...)

The strength of the social justice brand is, in fact, entirely reasonable. It fights for social justice, which not only sounds good but is something most of us generally support. (...) The overwhelming majority view and broad liberal consensus is that we should have societies that are as fair and kind as it is possible to be, even if we don't all agree on what fairness and kindness look like or what the limits of possibility are.

Still, the ideological movement that's visibly more likely to carry pitchforks than water for the cause of social justice has become a menace and threatens to become a tyrant, and this is a shame. We risk losing a lot of progress at the hands of this abominable fumble. Something claiming to speak for social justice is rotten, and I am declaring that something the enemy of free, civil, and liberal societies. This may be seen as controversial, but the dispute is borne in ignorance. It, itself, openly and admittedly begins and ends with a ruthless criticism of liberalism and free societies, which it deems as inherently and systemically oppressive.

Attempts to name this ideological enemy—for enemy it is—are therefore necessary so that we might frame our arguments against it with the requisite precision and clarity needed to challenge it, but they are also fraught. One might be tempted to call it the Social Justice Movement or Social Justice ideology or just Social Justice made into a proper noun, as many have, including myself and my colleagues. This clearly has its problems. It feeds into exactly the nearly perfect branding that the movement wants, it risks the genuinely positive valence of that which genuinely deserves the name "social justice," and it places people who understand, thus resist, this parasitic ideology on a back foot of having to explain why on Earth they'd be against social justice in the first place.

It's quite the pickle. (...)

From similar quarters, then, we might hear the movement called "Cultural Marxism," probably more than half rightly, but for all the truth this carries, it's a difficult—and icky—position to defend. (...)

Complicating the problem of naming the enemy in the "woke" ideology of Social Justice further is that what's going on with this movement today is undeniably postmodernist (and poststructuralist)—despite protestations from overly narrow philosophers who contend that postmodernism proper died out thirty years ago. This makes it even more difficult to get anything Marxist, Marxian, or even Marxish to stick to the effort to create social justice, no matter how accurately the terms at hand might apply.

The unavoidable issue is that the postmodernists were, themselves, not Marxists or even Neo-Marxists like in the Frankfurt School (...)

This means that the postmodernists, socialistic or even communist in orientation as they might have been (and they were), were far too pessimistic, cynical, and nihilistic to be real Marxists, structuralists, or anything–stable-ist of any kind. That would have required precisely the kind of commitment they studiously avoided by writing thousands of pages to declare it naive, foolish, idealistic, out-of-touch, and in immediate need of deconstruction. (...)

(...) Indeed, much of the existing literature around this problem studiously avoided naming it, lending strength to the postmodernism at its heart, which made it very frustrating and difficult from a communications point of view.

(...)

Still, it's nearly always best to name your enemy something that they would or do call themselves, when you can, because then they can't deny that the name fits. (...)

Fortunately, two critical educators, Ozlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo, the latter of which is quite well-known and can thus be treated as representatively authoritative, provided me with a solution to this naming problem in their 2012 education manual Is Everyone Really Equal? They, themselves, call what they're presenting critical social justice. This fits. I've just added capitals to make sure we understand the proper noun for what it is—the enemy, which we can now name: Critical Social Justice. This is how they introduced this concept to the world:

(...)

Even though it's not 250 words long, there's so much in that introductory passage about Critical Social Justice that we could spend pages and pages discussing it, but let me draw your attention to a few key points that characterize Critical Social Justice and identify it—not social justice—as the right target, thus the right name for this enemy of free societies.

First, note that the authors take pains to explain not only that Critical Social Justice isn't what most people mean by "social justice," it's also something so distinct from social justice that "some scholars and activists prefer to use the term social justice in order to reclaim its true commitments." That is, Critical Social Justice does not have the same "true commitments" to social justice as most people. They tell us explicitly that people with "mainstream standpoints" about social justice mean something entirely different than what they will describe. This leads us to a staggering conclusion: Critical Social Justice doesn't represent social justice. It represents a particular approach to that idea that must be distinguished from social justice lest people confuse the two.

Second, observe that the authors indicate explicitly that what sets Critical Social Justice apart is that it relies upon a critical theoretical approach. This is, in fact, the belly of the beast. It also makes clear why there's so much weight to the wide-ranging attempts to brand this enemy with terms like Neo-Marxism, New Left (liberationism), and Cultural Marxism. Put simply, they're not wrong. Critical Social Justice is critical theory. Moreover, this status is precisely what sets it apart from "mainstream standpoints" on social justice—the ones that represent its "true commitments."

Third, pause to appreciate the fourth bullet point given above telling us what Critical Social Justice stands for: "Social injustice is real, exists today, and results in unequal access to resources between groups of people." Volumes could be written on this point alone—and perhaps they should be. "Social injustice is real." That is, Critical Social Justice begins with a reification of social injustice. This seems like a small point, perhaps even an obvious one, but it's a very big one that takes a little explaining.

Of course, before proceeding, it is quite clear to virtually everyone that social injustices do occur and have occurred in far greater levels in the past; I will not and would not deny that. It's also quite clear to the majority of us that these social injustices legitimately represent a problem that deserves our attention; this I fully agree with. This, however, is where the postmodern context of Critical Social Justice has to be brought into scrutiny. (The above discussion of this point on my part aside, Sensoy and DiAngelo mention these roots, along with those in the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, a few pages after the above passage.)

Because Critical Social Justice is postmodernist in orientation as well, for it nothing is objectively real. Everything, and very much not least knowledge, is under postmodernist thought merely a contrivance of social constructions, which are in turn reflections of social power and its concentrations ("positionality" "must be engaged"). Race is a social construct; okay, fine, probably so. Gender is a social construct; erm, maybe, but we'll let you (mostly) have it. Biological sex is a social construct; wait, what? Various theorists take their social constructivism more or less neat as compared with others, but the general attitude of antirealism at the heart of postmodern thought and the Critical Social Justice movement is hardly a matter of legitimate controversy. The postmodern view is that, short of our own unnarrated subjective experience, everything in human life is a socially contingent construct. Reality may be out there, but we can't know it.

Under Critical Social Justice, however, social injustice is real, like really real. (It is, after all, a matter of unnarrated subjective experience.) That is, Critical Social Justice roots itself in a worldview that denies that anything is real (as opposed to being socially constructed), that objective truth isn't possible (in the general sense, not the philosophically technical one), but that the subjective experience of injustice or oppression isn't just valid or important but objectively real in how our societies are structured. Note well: "Critical social justice recognizes inequality as deeply embedded in the fabric of society (i.e., as structural), and actively seeks to change this." This, by the way, reminds us that the postmodern (i.e., poststructuralist) roots of Critical Social Justice are utterly central to its worldview.

Though it goes too far afield for this essay, the subject of how postmodernism mutated, not died, to admit the Critical Theory of the Neo-Marxists in limited, class-disinterested fashion is developed at length in my forthcoming book with Helen Pluckrose, Cynical Theories. Interested readers are strongly encouraged to have a look.

Fourth, notice the focus upon social activism. The passage just quoted indicates that Critical Social Justice "actively seeks to change" the "fabric of society," which it deems as being "structurally" unjust. That means that signing up for Critical Social Justice carries with it signing on to a badly designed bid for social revolution that seeks to dismantle the current fabric of society. Dismantle it, though, and replace it with... what? Replace it with Critical Social Justice, of course, which is to say critical theory that operates in service to Cultural Marxism (the conflict theory, not the conspiracy theory) using postmodern social theory as its primary apparatus.  (...)

Unsurprisingly, then, this commitment is to be serious, as indicated in the next-to-last bullet point in their list: "Those who claim to be for social justice must be engaged in self-reflection about their own socialization into these groups (their 'positionality') and must strategically act from that awareness in ways that challenge social injustice." Must. Must. Twice this sentence explains that it isn't sufficient to be for social justice, to care about fairness, or to work for equality. You have to sign up for the revolution, and the revolution starts with you.

It's right there in black and white: to claim to be for Critical Social Justice, one must interrogate themselves and society, and one must "act strategically" from that awareness—a critical consciousness—"in ways that challenge social injustice." This is consistent with the demand, reaching all the way back to Max Horkheimer's description in 1937 that a Critical Theory must be applicable by social activism, and it is a core demand of Critical Social Justice today. It also extends that demand to a program Spanish Catholics in the fifteenth century would have been proud of.

Hence, fifth, and last (so as not to belabor the point), the last bullet point on their list admonishes that to sign up for Critical Social Justice requires a commitment; a lifelong commitment to an ongoing process that results from a personal awakening to a critical consciousness. That is, it's a faith. It's a faith that requires not only penitence but evangelism, since it can't yet apply torquemada (except metaphorically and applied in a social fashion) (torquemada viittaa inkvisitioon).

Critical Social Justice is a kind of religious worldview that seeks to enforce Critical Social Justice and produce more activists for Critical Social Justice. These will be critical theorists and activists who claim to be about social justice when they are, in fact, about critical theories. Rather than a God to worship and serve, the upside-down postmodern faith of Critical Social Justice offers an Enemy—systemic injustice—to destroy, and whatever remains or gets erected in place of what it deconstructs will then be subject to the same fate.

This probably isn't what you think you're defending when you, as a good and decent person who cares about people and the problems of society, defend social justice. Most of the people who support it have no idea because they, like most normal people, have never read the primary literature. The fact is, Critical Social Justice is not about social justice at all; it has stolen social justice from the people who care about it and need it most.

I therefore propose that the enemy we face is not social justice, though it will tend to wear this name as a suit of armor. We should clearly and consistently name this thing Critical Social Justice, and it will be up to us to learn to tell the difference. Again, enemy it is—of all free societies and the overwhelming majority of those who would live within them. I therefore further propose that we should use this name, learn to differentiate the two, and hold the Critical Social Justice ideology to its commitments: an anti-liberal fusion of postmodern theory and Neo-Marxist Critical Theory. Then we can be clear that Critical Social Justice has co-opted the very idea of social justice from those who wish to promote its true commitments, as they, themselves, openly recognize, and we can do something about it.

QuoteThe University as the Woke Mission Field: A Dissident Women's Studies Ph.D. Speaks Out

I have a Ph.D. in Women's Studies, but I'm not woke anymore. I write under a pseudonym because, if my colleagues were to find out about my criticisms of this field, I would be unable to find any employment in academia. That someone who critiques the axioms of a field of study feels compelled to write under an assumed name tells you everything you need to know about the authoritarianism underpinning this ideology. I no longer believe that the fundamental ideas of Women's Studies, and of Critical Social Justice more generally, describe reality; they are at best partial explanations—hyperbolic ideology, not fact-based analysis. I have seen this ideology up close and seen how it consumes and even destroys people, while dehumanizing anyone who dissents.

I'm sad to say it, but I believe that Critical Social Justice ideology—if not beaten in the war of ideas—will destroy the liberal foundation of American society. (...) Far from being counter-cultural, Critical Social Justice ideology is now the cultural mainstream. A diverse spectrum of liberals, libertarians, conservatives, and all others who, to put it bluntly, want the American constitution to continue to serve as the basis for our society have to team up to prevent this ideology from destroying our country.

I became "woke" around 2003, so I have nearly two decades of experience with Critical Social Justice ideology. (...)

(...) I naively assumed that professors are among the smartest people in the country, and I had no idea that the professoriate is heavily slanted to the ideological left. I now understand that Critical Social Justice professors are evangelists for their faith and the university is their mission field. Their goal is to take young students—inexperienced, eager to succeed—unmoor them from any faith tradition they might have, even if it's just American civics, and replace that with Critical Social Justice ideology. And, for the most part, these professors succeed. They are, on the whole, likable people—energetic, personable, and caring.

My first encounters with Critical Social Justice came during the feminism unit of this course, which included works by Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Angela Davis, (...) Critical Social Justice ideas felt intoxicating, like stumbling onto a portal into a new world. I felt like a detective, with my newly developing critical consciousness understanding society for the first time—all the oppression, the sexism, racism, the evils of capitalism, and so on. It felt righteous, like I was part of a counter-cultural movement, a vanguard helping to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice.

(...)

My foray into radical politics ended around the time I started a master's program in creative writing. (...)

When I began my Ph.D. program in 2013 at a highly ranked university, I began to see that something about my new colleagues was different from what I remembered about my colleagues just a few years earlier. (...)

I realized that Critical Social Justice was no longer a fringe intellectual field of study, but a real force that was reshaping the university. (...) Around this time, I became extremely disturbed when, while serving on a committee that gave writing awards, I was attacked by other committee members for judging on merit, for not taking into account skin color or gender.

Yet I don't think I fully understand the authoritarian aspects of woke ideology until after Trump won the 2016 election. In late 2016 and early 2017, I witnessed shocking behavior from my colleagues, who began attacking Republicans, white people, conservatives, and Christians as oppressors. They attacked free speech, saying that some people did not deserve a platform because they were engaging in "hate speech." I argued that there isn't a clear definition of what constitutes hate speech; and that the constitution protects all speech, save for incitement to imminent lawless action. For saying this, I was attacked as stupid, a bad person, a "right-winger." Early in Trump's administration, one of my colleagues said that political violence was justified as a response to his "evil" policies. While I'm no fan of Trump, I oppose violence—a basic principle I thought that all Americans shared. It was in this context that I became disillusioned with the ideology in which I had been immersed for years.

I decided to seek out and try to understand other points of view, so I read books by authors to whom I had never been exposed, such as F.A. Hayek, Ronald Bork, Jonathan Haidt, Thomas Sowell, and others. I began to read and listen to conservative, classically liberal, and libertarian thinkers—people whose ideas I had never encountered in all my years of so-called "higher" education. I listened with an open mind, and I didn't see any hatred from these thinkers. On the contrary, I discovered carefully reasoned, evidence-based arguments that had much greater explanatory abilities than anything I'd read in the Critical Social Justice literature.

I realized that Critical Social Justice ideology is not only intellectually vacuous; it is downright dangerous, and that the reason it has captivated so many minds is not because of the strength of its ideas, but because it has succeeded in silencing more reasonable and time-tested principles. (...) Sadly, American universities are, for the most part, not marketplaces of ideas, but mere echo chambers.

It is an obvious fact that all civilizations must pass on their values to the young; if they do not, or if the young are taught different values, then the civilization cannot sustain itself. (...) Suffice it to say that our universities are so infected with Critical Social Justice ideology that they are probably not salvageable at this point.

(...)

However, people committed to liberal values have many significant disadvantages in this fight. (...) Liberals are committed to Enlightenment values of reasoned debate, pursuit of truth, the scientific method, fact-based analysis, and treating people as individuals, not as groups. In contrast, the woke view these Enlightenment values as a white supremacist project; wokeness advances primarily through underhanded tactics: histrionic open letters that accuse ideological opponents as traumatizing and even threatening the very existence of people of color, cancel culture, flash mobs, protests that sometimes devolve into riots, and so forth. Worse, the entrenchment of Critical Social Justice ideology in academia, mass and social media companies, philanthropic foundations, corporate human resources departments, federal and state administrative bureaucracies, and Silicon Valley—combined with surveillance technology—points toward the emergence of a social credit system similar to what exists now in China. Liberals, in short, are bringing the proverbial knife to a gun fight. But we must fight. There is no other choice.

In closing, I want to offer some thoughts on how to defeat Critical Social Justice ideology. If we want to understand why this ideology is winning over the young, we have to understand its appeal. American culture is becoming increasingly secular, which means that more young people don't have a faith tradition, and social justice ideology is, as many have discussed, filling a religious void. The woke have a messianic complex, a (if you'll excuse the pun, millenarian) goal to remake society, and view anyone who is opposed to their project not as simply having a different worldview, but as evil. (...)

There is so little viewpoint diversity in academia that students don't even realize that what they are being taught is an ideology, not factual analysis. As Niall Ferguson accurately put it, "North American academia is in the grip of a hideous mania, a cross between the early-modern witch craze and Mao's Cultural Revolution, in which implacable zealots conduct grotesque show trials, innocent individuals have their reputations, careers and sanity destroyed, and everyone else cowers, terrified that they will be next to be 'canceled.'" (Source: a blurb from Quillette's new book, Panics and Persecutions). The American public university system—especially humanities and social sciences—is a cancer on society, as it is teaching students to hate their country and its core values. This is not to say that there shouldn't be academic critiques of the country. On the contrary, critiques help to improve society. But we have reached a point where there are hardly any academics left to transmit the basic principles of the country.

(...)

One of the most urgent needs is the development of a grassroots movement for intellectual diversity on campus, spearheaded by students, alumni, parents, and concerned citizens. I hope that existing conservative, centrist, or libertarian organizations can help to facilitate this movement by providing organizational and logistical support at campuses throughout the country. Everyone should take a close look at their state's public universities' Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity initiatives to see if intellectual diversity is included. If it is not, then the obvious first step is to advocate for the inclusion of intellectual diversity. (...)

If America has any chance of continuing the classical liberal values upon which it was founded, then students who have a commitment to these values have to enter the teaching profession—as doctoral students in education, as administrators, and as public school teachers. (...) Critical race theory also needs to be resisted because it, as its own proponents assert, "questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law." (Delgado and Stefancic, Critical Race Theory: An Introduction). (...)

Another important project should be the revival of Western civilization and Great Books courses, at all levels of education, but most critically in the universities. (...) An excellent example of a Western civ curriculum can be found in the James Madison program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, which is dedicated to "exploring enduring questions of American constitutional law and Western political thought." Another avenue is to look into funding institutes for education in Western civilization as a new department at extant colleges and universities.

I would love to see crowd-sourced funds used to construct a beautiful classical building adjacent to one of the ugliest college campuses in the country, preferably one composed entirely of postwar Brutalist buildings. (...)

In the long term, it is going to be necessary to create more universities devoted to classical education, not indoctrination into Critical Social Justice ideology, as well as more K-12 private and charter schools in the classical tradition because university schools of education have been training "social justice" educators for decades now, so Critical Social Justice ideology is now in the K-12 public schools. (...)

(...) Far from being a bastion of white supremacy, America's liberal values are what have attracted people from all countries to undergo great hardship to come here, precisely because this is one of the few places in which ordinary people can exercise their talents to achieve a standard of living that is impossible in most of the world. It is my fervent hope that more American college students—especially the "woke" who rail against their own country as evil—would be required to spend a semester abroad in a developing country in order to gain some much-needed perspective on the struggles people face who were not fortunate enough to be born into such an "oppressive" place as America.

Lastly, I have focused mostly on academia and education because this is the sector I know best, but I strongly urge everyone, from all walks of life, to embrace your sense of humor (a quality that is conspicuously absent in woke culture). Wokeness should continue to relentlessly mocked and parodied through meme culture (Andrew Doyle's Titania McGrath is a great example). Just as important: Be courageous. Stand up for the beliefs that have made America a great country. (...) I think a lot of liberals, like me, generally, if not naively, assumed that the liberal values underpinning America would simply continue throughout our lives, but these values are under attack and they need to be vigorously and unapologetically defended. Our civilization is at stake and the hour is late.

Quote from: Muhmutti on 25.12.2020, 13:10:19
Olis ihan jees, jos näihin englanninkielisiin artikkeleihin saisi sen suomennoksen. Ollaan kuitenkin Suomessa eikä jenkeissä.

Quote from: Muhmutti on 25.12.2020, 16:03:45
Täysin eri mieltä. Tykkään lukea artikkelit suomeksi. Minusta on kohteliasta ja hyviin tapoihin kuuluvaa, että artikkelin lainaaja kääntää artikkelin. Tai edes referoi tärkeimmät kohdat suomeksi. En usko, että kovin moni olisi mielissään esim. portugalin tai vaikka kreikankielisistä artikkeleista.

Quote from: P on 25.12.2020, 16:44:24

Quote from: Muhmutti on 25.12.2020, 16:03:45
Täysin eri mieltä. Tykkään lukea artikkelit suomeksi. Minusta on kohteliasta ja hyviin tapoihin kuuluvaa, että artikkelin lainaaja kääntää artikkelin. Tai edes referoi tärkeimmät kohdat suomeksi. En usko, että kovin moni olisi mielissään esim. portugalin tai vaikka kreikankielisistä artikkeleista.

Kuule. Näivettyy homma lopullisesti. Ei kenelläkään ole aikaa nyhvätä jotain englanninkielistä artikkelia suomeksi, kun suurin osa ihmisistä lukee englantia. Ei täällä olla kääntämistä harrastamassa. Sille puuhalle on omat sivustonsa.

Quote from: zupi on 25.12.2020, 23:35:32
En tiedä, oliko täällä jo viime jouluna, mutta joka tapauksessa...

[tweet]1209596831740649472[/tweet]

Quote from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titania_McGrath
Titania McGrath (@TitaniaMcGrath) is a parody Twitter account created and run by comedian and Spiked columnist Andrew Doyle.

Quote from: Nuivettunut Han-nenetsi on 26.12.2020, 00:15:32
(...) Lähinnä mielenkiintoista seurata ottaako joku todellinen intersektionalisti-wokeisti hänen twiittinsä tosissaan.

(...)

QuoteOn Sex and Gender, The New England Journal of Medicine Has Abandoned Its Scientific Mission

Two years ago, "Titania McGrath," whose satirical Twitter account regularly skewers the ideological excesses of social-justice culture, suggested that "we should remove biological sex from birth certificates altogether to prevent any more mistakes." The joke (obvious to those who follow the culture wars closely, but perhaps obscure to those who don't) was directed at gender activists who insist that male and female designations "assigned at birth" are misleading (and even dangerous), since they may misrepresent a person's true "gender identity"—that internally felt soul-like quality that supposedly transcends such superficial physical indicia as gonads and genitalia.

But the line between satire and sincerity has become blurry on this issue. Last Thursday, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), widely considered to be the world's most prestigious medical journal, published an article entitled Failed Assignments—Rethinking Sex Designations on Birth Certificates, arguing that (in the words of the abstract) "sex designations on birth certificates offer no clinical utility, and they can be harmful for intersex and transgender people." The resemblance to Titania McGrath's 2018-era Twitter feed is uncanny. Two of the authors are doctors. The third, Jessica A. Clarke, is a law school professor who seeks to remake our legal system so as to "recognize nonbinary gender identities or eliminate unnecessary legal sex classifications."

The very idea of "a dichotomous sex-classification system" is dubious, the authors believe. And even if such a system were preserved, they write, it should be based "on self-identification at an older age, rather than on a medical evaluation at birth." Sex designations on birth certificates, it is argued, "offer no clinical utility; they serve only legal—not medical—goals."

(...)

While such arguments seem inconsistent with common sense (not to mention the daily diagnostic and treatment protocols employed by millions of doctors around the world), the fact that editors at such a prestigious journal as NEJM have chosen to assign credence to these arguments leaves us no choice but to unpack them.

(...)

Not only is biological sex a clinically significant factor in medicine, in many cases it is among the most important factors that a patient presents—even putting aside such obvious examples as prostate and uterine cancer, which afflict only males or females respectively.

(...) They state plainly that "efforts to bring sex and gender into the mainstream of modern medical research, practice, and education are urgently needed, as the lack of appreciation for sex and gender differences harms both women and men."

So given this baseline of widely accepted medical knowledge about the important differences between the biologically male and female populations, why did NEJM publish Failed Assignments—Rethinking Sex Designations on Birth Certificates?

To help answer that question, consider the case of another misleading article: Lise Eliot's appreciative Nature review of The Gendered Brain, a 2019 book by Gina Rippon that inaccurately claimed observed sex differences in the brains of males and females are largely a "myth" that reflects "neurosexist" bigotry. In a published response to Eliot's credulous take on Rippon's book, several experts reminded Nature's readers that "a variety of neurological and psychiatric conditions demonstrate robust differences between the sexes in their incidence, symptoms, progression and response to treatment... When properly documented and studied, sex and gender differences are the gateway to precision medicine."

Now consider the different social-media imprints of these two Nature articles, as quantified by the website Altmetric, which tracks the degree to which scientific literature is reported by news outlets, blogs, and social-media users. As the accompanying image shows, the attention paid to Eliot's positive review of Rippon's dubious book on "Neurosexism" dwarfed the sober and factual debunking of it by a ratio exceeding 50:1.

Indeed, Nature's original "Neurosexism" piece immediately went viral on social media. It showed up in eight news outlets, five blogs, 6,543 tweets, 70 Facebook pages, and received mention on Wikipedia, Reddit, and three video sites. And why wouldn't it? The idea that there are no sex differences in human neuroanatomy—that we are all blank slates, so to speak, and so any observable variation must be the result of cultural conditioning or sexist bigotry—always plays well in the lay media, as it accords well with the expansive progressive understanding of sexism. Meanwhile, the actual facts, boring as they may be to most social media users—that "a variety of neurological and psychiatric conditions demonstrate robust differences between the sexes in their incidence, symptoms, progression and response to treatment"—barely received any notice whatsoever.

And here we get to what has changed in recent years. Historically, scientific journalists and publishers worked within a professional milieu in which, with few exceptions, the judgments that mattered most were those rendered by other experts. But that's now changed, thanks to social media. While the editors at such publications as Nature and NEJM may be excellent scientists, they also have the same appetite for praise and acceptance as everyone else. And if social media is telling them that a certain kind of article will mark them as enlightened, surely that will affect their choice of what to publish.

Not to mention, their choice of what to unpublish. On November 17th, Nature Communications published an article titled The Association Between Early Career Informal Mentorship in Academic Collaborations and Junior Author Performance, whose peer-reviewed results challenged the fashionable idea that same-sex mentoring arrangements help younger women. Needless to say, Twitter erupted in fury, leading to a slew of revisions that editors hoped would mollify critics. But that didn't keep critics at bay. And so this week the article was retracted entirely, with the editors abjectly pledging to now "reflect on our editorial processes and strength[en] our determination in supporting diversity, equity and inclusion in research." It's hard not to read this as an admission that the publication will no longer even pretend to ignore ideological fashion in rendering its editorial judgments.

(...) The November 17th Nature paper was retracted despite being approved, in its multiple forms, by not one but two peer-review teams—while the NEJM and similarly prestigious publications now publish articles about sex and gender that plainly defy basic biological principles of sexual dimorphism understood even by small children.

(...)

As a biologist, I understand the terms that are being used here. But as a journalist, I get the sense that the authors' primary goal is to overwhelm readers with specialized language that suggests an individual's sex is the output of some complex equation (or, as the authors put it, "a function of multiple biologic processes"). Such language disguises the plain fact that sex is defined functionally based on the type of gamete (sex cell) that forms the basis for an individual's reproductive anatomy. Males comprise the sex that produces small, motile sex cells (sperm); while females comprise the sex that produces large, sessile sex cells (ova). It doesn't matter whether any individual can actually, or eventually does, produce gametes. An individual human being's sex is determined by their primary sex organs, and an individual's sex is accurately recorded over 99.98 percent of the time using genitals as a proxy for underlying gonad type.

(...)

While I have no reason to dispute the statistics cited here, it is stunning that this kind of logic would be featured in a scientific journal. "Identity"—including "gender identity"—is a socially constructed phenomenon that says nothing about one's biological sex. And while it has always been known that some individuals are affected by gender dysphoria, the idea that biology shall be superseded by self-conceived gender identity—not only in the social and legal spheres, but also in some quasi-scientific sense—is a novel claim that would have seemed bizarre to everyone (including trans activists themselves) just a few years ago. Twitter and Tumblr are full of people who insist on the truth of this claim, of course. But they generally do so as activists and moralists—not as scientists.

(...)

Even "Titania McGrath" could scarcely have known how quickly such ideological fads would metastasize into medical literature. And it should be a source of shame for the editors of the NEJM that today's published content now reads as a plagiarized rehash of yesterday's farce.

Quote from: zupi on 26.12.2020, 11:21:24

Quote from: Nuivettunut Han-nenetsi on 26.12.2020, 00:15:32
(...) Lähinnä mielenkiintoista seurata ottaako joku todellinen intersektionalisti-wokeisti hänen twiittinsä tosissaan.

(...)

Titanian "ennustuksilla" on ikävä kyllä tapana käydä toteen. Eiköhän sitä ensi jouluun mennessä rovion lieskat jo iske joulupukin parran korkeudella. Onhan tuo joulupukki nyt kaikessa valkoisuudessaan ja miehisyydessään vain vähän liian herkullinen kohde woke-porukalle. Tänä vuonna vielä pukki säästyi, kun ei päässyt koronan vuoksi liikkeelle...

Titanian ennustuksiin liittyen alla yksi artikkeli, mihin jo viitattiinkin tuossa aiemmassa Titanian toteutuneiden ennustusten twitter-ketjussa. Maailman ehkä arvostetuin lääketieteellinen julkaisu on siis julkaissut artikkelin, jonka mukaan sukupuoli pitää poistaa syntymätodistuksista "haitallisena"...  :facepalm: "Tiedettä" kun tehdään nykyisin some-tykkäysten, ja some-kritiikin, pohjalta. Ja kaikki varmasti tietää, ketkä sitä somea hallitsee.

https://quillette.com/2020/12/23/on-sex-and-gender-the-new-england-journal-of-medicine-has-abandoned-its-scientific-mission/ (https://quillette.com/2020/12/23/on-sex-and-gender-the-new-england-journal-of-medicine-has-abandoned-its-scientific-mission/)

QuoteOn Sex and Gender, The New England Journal of Medicine Has Abandoned Its Scientific Mission

Two years ago, "Titania McGrath," whose satirical Twitter account regularly skewers the ideological excesses of social-justice culture, suggested that "we should remove biological sex from birth certificates altogether to prevent any more mistakes." The joke (obvious to those who follow the culture wars closely, but perhaps obscure to those who don't) was directed at gender activists who insist that male and female designations "assigned at birth" are misleading (and even dangerous), since they may misrepresent a person's true "gender identity"—that internally felt soul-like quality that supposedly transcends such superficial physical indicia as gonads and genitalia.

But the line between satire and sincerity has become blurry on this issue. Last Thursday, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), widely considered to be the world's most prestigious medical journal, published an article entitled Failed Assignments—Rethinking Sex Designations on Birth Certificates, arguing that (in the words of the abstract) "sex designations on birth certificates offer no clinical utility, and they can be harmful for intersex and transgender people." The resemblance to Titania McGrath's 2018-era Twitter feed is uncanny. Two of the authors are doctors. The third, Jessica A. Clarke, is a law school professor who seeks to remake our legal system so as to "recognize nonbinary gender identities or eliminate unnecessary legal sex classifications."

The very idea of "a dichotomous sex-classification system" is dubious, the authors believe. And even if such a system were preserved, they write, it should be based "on self-identification at an older age, rather than on a medical evaluation at birth." Sex designations on birth certificates, it is argued, "offer no clinical utility; they serve only legal—not medical—goals."

(...)

While such arguments seem inconsistent with common sense (not to mention the daily diagnostic and treatment protocols employed by millions of doctors around the world), the fact that editors at such a prestigious journal as NEJM have chosen to assign credence to these arguments leaves us no choice but to unpack them.

(...)

Not only is biological sex a clinically significant factor in medicine, in many cases it is among the most important factors that a patient presents—even putting aside such obvious examples as prostate and uterine cancer, which afflict only males or females respectively.

(...) They state plainly that "efforts to bring sex and gender into the mainstream of modern medical research, practice, and education are urgently needed, as the lack of appreciation for sex and gender differences harms both women and men."

So given this baseline of widely accepted medical knowledge about the important differences between the biologically male and female populations, why did NEJM publish Failed Assignments—Rethinking Sex Designations on Birth Certificates?

To help answer that question, consider the case of another misleading article: Lise Eliot's appreciative Nature review of The Gendered Brain, a 2019 book by Gina Rippon that inaccurately claimed observed sex differences in the brains of males and females are largely a "myth" that reflects "neurosexist" bigotry. In a published response to Eliot's credulous take on Rippon's book, several experts reminded Nature's readers that "a variety of neurological and psychiatric conditions demonstrate robust differences between the sexes in their incidence, symptoms, progression and response to treatment... When properly documented and studied, sex and gender differences are the gateway to precision medicine."

Now consider the different social-media imprints of these two Nature articles, as quantified by the website Altmetric, which tracks the degree to which scientific literature is reported by news outlets, blogs, and social-media users. As the accompanying image shows, the attention paid to Eliot's positive review of Rippon's dubious book on "Neurosexism" dwarfed the sober and factual debunking of it by a ratio exceeding 50:1.

Indeed, Nature's original "Neurosexism" piece immediately went viral on social media. It showed up in eight news outlets, five blogs, 6,543 tweets, 70 Facebook pages, and received mention on Wikipedia, Reddit, and three video sites. And why wouldn't it? The idea that there are no sex differences in human neuroanatomy—that we are all blank slates, so to speak, and so any observable variation must be the result of cultural conditioning or sexist bigotry—always plays well in the lay media, as it accords well with the expansive progressive understanding of sexism. Meanwhile, the actual facts, boring as they may be to most social media users—that "a variety of neurological and psychiatric conditions demonstrate robust differences between the sexes in their incidence, symptoms, progression and response to treatment"—barely received any notice whatsoever.

And here we get to what has changed in recent years. Historically, scientific journalists and publishers worked within a professional milieu in which, with few exceptions, the judgments that mattered most were those rendered by other experts. But that's now changed, thanks to social media. While the editors at such publications as Nature and NEJM may be excellent scientists, they also have the same appetite for praise and acceptance as everyone else. And if social media is telling them that a certain kind of article will mark them as enlightened, surely that will affect their choice of what to publish.

Not to mention, their choice of what to unpublish. On November 17th, Nature Communications published an article titled The Association Between Early Career Informal Mentorship in Academic Collaborations and Junior Author Performance, whose peer-reviewed results challenged the fashionable idea that same-sex mentoring arrangements help younger women. Needless to say, Twitter erupted in fury, leading to a slew of revisions that editors hoped would mollify critics. But that didn't keep critics at bay. And so this week the article was retracted entirely, with the editors abjectly pledging to now "reflect on our editorial processes and strength[en] our determination in supporting diversity, equity and inclusion in research." It's hard not to read this as an admission that the publication will no longer even pretend to ignore ideological fashion in rendering its editorial judgments.

(...) The November 17th Nature paper was retracted despite being approved, in its multiple forms, by not one but two peer-review teams—while the NEJM and similarly prestigious publications now publish articles about sex and gender that plainly defy basic biological principles of sexual dimorphism understood even by small children.

(...)

As a biologist, I understand the terms that are being used here. But as a journalist, I get the sense that the authors' primary goal is to overwhelm readers with specialized language that suggests an individual's sex is the output of some complex equation (or, as the authors put it, "a function of multiple biologic processes"). Such language disguises the plain fact that sex is defined functionally based on the type of gamete (sex cell) that forms the basis for an individual's reproductive anatomy. Males comprise the sex that produces small, motile sex cells (sperm); while females comprise the sex that produces large, sessile sex cells (ova). It doesn't matter whether any individual can actually, or eventually does, produce gametes. An individual human being's sex is determined by their primary sex organs, and an individual's sex is accurately recorded over 99.98 percent of the time using genitals as a proxy for underlying gonad type.

(...)

While I have no reason to dispute the statistics cited here, it is stunning that this kind of logic would be featured in a scientific journal. "Identity"—including "gender identity"—is a socially constructed phenomenon that says nothing about one's biological sex. And while it has always been known that some individuals are affected by gender dysphoria, the idea that biology shall be superseded by self-conceived gender identity—not only in the social and legal spheres, but also in some quasi-scientific sense—is a novel claim that would have seemed bizarre to everyone (including trans activists themselves) just a few years ago. Twitter and Tumblr are full of people who insist on the truth of this claim, of course. But they generally do so as activists and moralists—not as scientists.

(...)

Even "Titania McGrath" could scarcely have known how quickly such ideological fads would metastasize into medical literature. And it should be a source of shame for the editors of the NEJM that today's published content now reads as a plagiarized rehash of yesterday's farce.

Quote from: zupi on 26.12.2020, 11:21:24

Quote from: Nuivettunut Han-nenetsi on 26.12.2020, 00:15:32
(...) Lähinnä mielenkiintoista seurata ottaako joku todellinen intersektionalisti-wokeisti hänen twiittinsä tosissaan.

(...)

Titanian "ennustuksilla" on ikävä kyllä tapana käydä toteen. Eiköhän sitä ensi jouluun mennessä rovion lieskat jo iske joulupukin parran korkeudella. Onhan tuo joulupukki nyt kaikessa valkoisuudessaan ja miehisyydessään vain vähän liian herkullinen kohde woke-porukalle. Tänä vuonna vielä pukki säästyi, kun ei päässyt koronan vuoksi liikkeelle...

Titanian ennustuksiin liittyen alla yksi artikkeli, mihin jo viitattiinkin tuossa aiemmassa Titanian toteutuneiden ennustusten twitter-ketjussa. Maailman ehkä arvostetuin lääketieteellinen julkaisu on siis julkaissut artikkelin, jonka mukaan sukupuoli pitää poistaa syntymätodistuksista "haitallisena"...  :facepalm: "Tiedettä" kun tehdään nykyisin some-tykkäysten, ja some-kritiikin, pohjalta. Ja kaikki varmasti tietää, ketkä sitä somea hallitsee.

https://quillette.com/2020/12/23/on-sex-and-gender-the-new-england-journal-of-medicine-has-abandoned-its-scientific-mission/ (https://quillette.com/2020/12/23/on-sex-and-gender-the-new-england-journal-of-medicine-has-abandoned-its-scientific-mission/)

QuoteOn Sex and Gender, The New England Journal of Medicine Has Abandoned Its Scientific Mission

Two years ago, "Titania McGrath," whose satirical Twitter account regularly skewers the ideological excesses of social-justice culture, suggested that "we should remove biological sex from birth certificates altogether to prevent any more mistakes." The joke (obvious to those who follow the culture wars closely, but perhaps obscure to those who don't) was directed at gender activists who insist that male and female designations "assigned at birth" are misleading (and even dangerous), since they may misrepresent a person's true "gender identity"—that internally felt soul-like quality that supposedly transcends such superficial physical indicia as gonads and genitalia.

But the line between satire and sincerity has become blurry on this issue. Last Thursday, the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), widely considered to be the world's most prestigious medical journal, published an article entitled Failed Assignments—Rethinking Sex Designations on Birth Certificates, arguing that (in the words of the abstract) "sex designations on birth certificates offer no clinical utility, and they can be harmful for intersex and transgender people." The resemblance to Titania McGrath's 2018-era Twitter feed is uncanny. Two of the authors are doctors. The third, Jessica A. Clarke, is a law school professor who seeks to remake our legal system so as to "recognize nonbinary gender identities or eliminate unnecessary legal sex classifications."

The very idea of "a dichotomous sex-classification system" is dubious, the authors believe. And even if such a system were preserved, they write, it should be based "on self-identification at an older age, rather than on a medical evaluation at birth." Sex designations on birth certificates, it is argued, "offer no clinical utility; they serve only legal—not medical—goals."

(...)

While such arguments seem inconsistent with common sense (not to mention the daily diagnostic and treatment protocols employed by millions of doctors around the world), the fact that editors at such a prestigious journal as NEJM have chosen to assign credence to these arguments leaves us no choice but to unpack them.

(...)

Not only is biological sex a clinically significant factor in medicine, in many cases it is among the most important factors that a patient presents—even putting aside such obvious examples as prostate and uterine cancer, which afflict only males or females respectively.

(...) They state plainly that "efforts to bring sex and gender into the mainstream of modern medical research, practice, and education are urgently needed, as the lack of appreciation for sex and gender differences harms both women and men."

So given this baseline of widely accepted medical knowledge about the important differences between the biologically male and female populations, why did NEJM publish Failed Assignments—Rethinking Sex Designations on Birth Certificates?

To help answer that question, consider the case of another misleading article: Lise Eliot's appreciative Nature review of The Gendered Brain, a 2019 book by Gina Rippon that inaccurately claimed observed sex differences in the brains of males and females are largely a "myth" that reflects "neurosexist" bigotry. In a published response to Eliot's credulous take on Rippon's book, several experts reminded Nature's readers that "a variety of neurological and psychiatric conditions demonstrate robust differences between the sexes in their incidence, symptoms, progression and response to treatment... When properly documented and studied, sex and gender differences are the gateway to precision medicine."

Now consider the different social-media imprints of these two Nature articles, as quantified by the website Altmetric, which tracks the degree to which scientific literature is reported by news outlets, blogs, and social-media users. As the accompanying image shows, the attention paid to Eliot's positive review of Rippon's dubious book on "Neurosexism" dwarfed the sober and factual debunking of it by a ratio exceeding 50:1.

Indeed, Nature's original "Neurosexism" piece immediately went viral on social media. It showed up in eight news outlets, five blogs, 6,543 tweets, 70 Facebook pages, and received mention on Wikipedia, Reddit, and three video sites. And why wouldn't it? The idea that there are no sex differences in human neuroanatomy—that we are all blank slates, so to speak, and so any observable variation must be the result of cultural conditioning or sexist bigotry—always plays well in the lay media, as it accords well with the expansive progressive understanding of sexism. Meanwhile, the actual facts, boring as they may be to most social media users—that "a variety of neurological and psychiatric conditions demonstrate robust differences between the sexes in their incidence, symptoms, progression and response to treatment"—barely received any notice whatsoever.

And here we get to what has changed in recent years. Historically, scientific journalists and publishers worked within a professional milieu in which, with few exceptions, the judgments that mattered most were those rendered by other experts. But that's now changed, thanks to social media. While the editors at such publications as Nature and NEJM may be excellent scientists, they also have the same appetite for praise and acceptance as everyone else. And if social media is telling them that a certain kind of article will mark them as enlightened, surely that will affect their choice of what to publish.

Not to mention, their choice of what to unpublish. On November 17th, Nature Communications published an article titled The Association Between Early Career Informal Mentorship in Academic Collaborations and Junior Author Performance, whose peer-reviewed results challenged the fashionable idea that same-sex mentoring arrangements help younger women. Needless to say, Twitter erupted in fury, leading to a slew of revisions that editors hoped would mollify critics. But that didn't keep critics at bay. And so this week the article was retracted entirely, with the editors abjectly pledging to now "reflect on our editorial processes and strength[en] our determination in supporting diversity, equity and inclusion in research." It's hard not to read this as an admission that the publication will no longer even pretend to ignore ideological fashion in rendering its editorial judgments.

(...) The November 17th Nature paper was retracted despite being approved, in its multiple forms, by not one but two peer-review teams—while the NEJM and similarly prestigious publications now publish articles about sex and gender that plainly defy basic biological principles of sexual dimorphism understood even by small children.

(...)

As a biologist, I understand the terms that are being used here. But as a journalist, I get the sense that the authors' primary goal is to overwhelm readers with specialized language that suggests an individual's sex is the output of some complex equation (or, as the authors put it, "a function of multiple biologic processes"). Such language disguises the plain fact that sex is defined functionally based on the type of gamete (sex cell) that forms the basis for an individual's reproductive anatomy. Males comprise the sex that produces small, motile sex cells (sperm); while females comprise the sex that produces large, sessile sex cells (ova). It doesn't matter whether any individual can actually, or eventually does, produce gametes. An individual human being's sex is determined by their primary sex organs, and an individual's sex is accurately recorded over 99.98 percent of the time using genitals as a proxy for underlying gonad type.

(...)

While I have no reason to dispute the statistics cited here, it is stunning that this kind of logic would be featured in a scientific journal. "Identity"—including "gender identity"—is a socially constructed phenomenon that says nothing about one's biological sex. And while it has always been known that some individuals are affected by gender dysphoria, the idea that biology shall be superseded by self-conceived gender identity—not only in the social and legal spheres, but also in some quasi-scientific sense—is a novel claim that would have seemed bizarre to everyone (including trans activists themselves) just a few years ago. Twitter and Tumblr are full of people who insist on the truth of this claim, of course. But they generally do so as activists and moralists—not as scientists.

(...)

Even "Titania McGrath" could scarcely have known how quickly such ideological fads would metastasize into medical literature. And it should be a source of shame for the editors of the NEJM that today's published content now reads as a plagiarized rehash of yesterday's farce.

QuotePsychopathy and the Origins of Totalitarianism

Many of the greatest horrors of the history of humanity owe their occurrence solely to the establishment and social enforcement of a false reality. With gratitude to the Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper and his important 1970 essay "Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power" for the term and idea, we can refer to these alternative realities as ideological pseudo-realities.

Pseudo-realities, being false and unreal, will always generate tragedy and evil on a scale that is at least proportional to the reach of their grip on power (...) up to and including war, genocide, and even civilizational collapse, all of which can take many millions of lives and can ruin many millions more in the vain pursuit of a fiction whose believers are, or are made, sufficiently intolerant.

The Nature of Pseudo-realities

Pseudo-realities are, simply put, false constructions of reality. It is hopefully obvious that among the features of pseudo-realities is that they must present a plausible but deliberately wrong understanding of reality. They are cult "realities" (...)

Pseudo-realities are always social fictions, which, in light of the above, means political fictions. That is, they are maintained not because they are true, in the sense that they correspond to reality, either material or human, but because a sufficient quantity of people in the society they attack either believe them or refuse to challenge them. This implies that pseudo-realities are linguistic phenomena above all else, and where power-granting linguistic distortions are present, it is likely that they are there to create and prop up some pseudo-reality. This also means that they require power, coercion, manipulation, and eventually force to keep them in place. Thus, they are the natural playground of psychopaths, and they are enabled by cowards and rationalizers. Most importantly, pseudo-realities do not attempt to describe reality as it is but rather as it "should be," as determined by the relatively small fraction of the population who cannot bear living in reality unless it is bent to enable their own psychopathologies, which will be projected upon their enemies, which means all normal people.

(...) In pseudo-reality, common sense is denigrated as bias or some kind of false consciousness, and science is replaced by a scientism that is a tool of power itself. (...)

It must be observed that people who accept pseudo-realities as though they are "real" are no longer normal people. They perceive pseudo-reality in place of reality, and the more thoroughly they take on this delusional position, the more functional psychopathy they necessarily exhibit and thus the less normal they become. Importantly, normal people consistently and consequentially fail to realize this about their reprogrammed neighbors. Perceiving them as normal people when they are not, normal people will reliably misunderstand the motivations of ideological pseudo-realists—power and the universal installation of their own ideology so that everyone lives in a pseudo-reality that enables their pathologies—usually until it is far too late.

As a result of this failure of perspective, many particularly epistemically and morally open normal people will reinterpret the claims of pseudo-reality into something that is plausible in reality under the usual logic and morals that guide our thinking, and this reinterpretation will work to the benefit of the pseudo-realists who have ensnared them. This sort of person, who stands between the real world and the pseudo-real are useful idiots to the ideology (...)

Pseudo-realities may have any degree of plausibility in their distorted descriptions of reality, and thus may recruit different numbers of adherents. They are often said to be accessible only by applying a "theoretical lens," awakening a specialized "consciousness," or by means of some pathological form of faith. Whether by "lens," "consciousness," or "faith," these intellectual constructs exist to make the pseudo-reality seem more plausible, to drag people into participating in it against their will, and to distinguish those who "can see," "are awake," or "believe" from those who cannot or, as it always eventually goes, will not. That is, they are the pretext to tell people who inhabit reality instead of pseudo-reality that they're not looking at "reality" correctly, which means as pseudo-reality. This will typically be characterized as a kind of willful ignorance of the pseudo-reality, which will subsequently be described paradoxically as unconsciously maintained. Notice that this puts the burden of epistemic and moral responsibility on the person inhabiting reality, not the person positing its replacement with an absurd pseudo-reality. This is a key functional manipulation of pseudo-realists that must be understood. The ability to recognize this phenomenon when it occurs and to resist it is, at scale, the life and death of civilizations.

(...) The nicer, more tolerant, and more charitable a community is, supposing it lacks the capacity to spot these counterfeits early on, the more susceptible its members will tend to be to these manipulations.

QuotePseudo-realities and Power

The ultimate purpose of creating a pseudo-reality is power, which the constructed pseudo-reality grants in many ways. Though these means are many, we should name a few. First, the pseudo-reality is always constructed such that it structurally advantages those who accept it over those who do not, frequently by overt double standards and through moral-linguistic traps. Double standards in this regard will always favor those who accept pseudo-reality as reality and will always disfavor those who seek the truth. An ideological pseudo-reality must displace reality in a sufficient population to grant itself power to succeed in its goals. Linguistic traps will often employ strategic double meanings of words (...)

Second, the very assertion of pseudo-reality demoralizes all who are pressed into engaging with it by the mere fact of being something false that must be treated as true. We should never underestimate how psychologically weakening and damaging it is to be forced to treat as true something that is not true, with the effect strengthening the more obviously false it is. (...)

Thus, third, by trading off normal people's assumptions that seemingly serious people care about what is true, they successfully force normal people to verify aspects of the pseudo-reality even in the act of denying it by getting the normal person to meet the ideologue part way. This is the relevance of pseudo-reality being pseudo-real, with greater plausibility strengthening the effect. That is, many normal people will fail to realize the pseudo-reality is false because they cannot see outside of the frame of normality that they charitably extend to all people, whether normal or not.

This dynamic bears a brief elaboration. Normal people do not tend to recognize that a broken logic and twisted morality is being used to prop up an ideological vision—a pseudo-reality—and that the mental states of the people within it (or held hostage by it) are not normal. Some among them, particularly the very but not exceptionally smart, thus skillfully reinterpret the absurd and dangerous claims of the pseudo-realist ideologues into something reasonable and sensible when, in fact, they are not reasonable or sensible. This, in turn, renders the pseudo-reality more palatable than it actually is and further disguises the distortions and underlying will to power presented by the ideological pseudo-realists. All of these features, and others, advantage the ideologue who, like some modern-day Zarathustra, speaks a pseudo-reality into existence, and all of these confer power upon that ideologue while stealing it from every participant in their social fiction, willing or not.

A Note on Ideology

As we are now speaking in terms of ideologues, we need to be clear before continuing that by "ideology" is meant here something closer to "cult ideology" than a more general meaning of the term. It is crucial to distinguish between these so that we do not confuse those sweeping approaches to contextualizing and understanding reality that are generative of comprehension of the real with those that exist in relationship with the pseudo-real.

Liberalism may, for example, be construed as an ideology, but it would not qualify as a cult ideology because, for any shortcomings it may have, it makes itself subordinate to the truth. (...) Accordingly, it exhibits none of the psychopathic tendencies that arise quite regularly in the context of ideologies that depend upon the production and maintenance of some useful but bogus pseudo-reality.

(...)

Pseudo-realities as Language Games

(...) Pseudo-real world-builders tend to manipulate people upon their vulnerabilities, which is a well-known fact of cult recruitment. Thus, they are most effective on people who have an underlying baseline of psychological, emotional, or spiritual illness, particularly of the kinds that relate poorly to the real world and the rough-and-tumble social realities within it. As noted, these are also often manufactured to purpose and target the psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually susceptible, along with the naive, the angry, and the aggrieved. It is in such minds where pseudo-realist manipulations are most effective and can generate a sizable sympathizer base among otherwise normal people, some of whom will be induced into the psychopathologies that underlie the whole project. (...)

QuoteAcademic Pseudo-realities

Given the fact that they are the tool of manipulative people who exhibit high thirst for power and linguistic savvy, pseudo-realists tend to target the (bourgeois) upper-middle class whose livelihoods depend most upon their credentialing and acceptance by a group of peers, particularly the highly educated, though not most brilliant, among them. An abnormally high proportion of such individuals are employed in education, media, politics, and especially academia. (The most potent and dangerous ideological pseudo-realities are the kinds of absurdities only academics could truly believe.) Among its features, pseudo-reality, being a linguistic and social construction, enables a path to careerism and credentialing in these sorts of professions far more than in most others, which generates an incentive structure that favors the pseudo-realists' ambitions.

(...)

This feature of pseudo-realist cultism strengthens as the mark accepts more of the premises of the pseudo-reality and thus divorces himself further and further from reality and normal people who live within it. This slowly traps adherents, who have almost no escape mechanism, even when ideological off-ramps are made plainly available. (...) With a distorted logic that can no longer perceive reality except as a counterfeit, they lack the necessary epistemic resources to challenge the ideology, even within themselves. With a subverted morality that perceives evil as good and good as evil in accordance with the slave morality of the pseudo-reality, their entire social environment is conditioned to keep them in a Hell whose gates are locked from the inside. Thus, to understand ideological pseudo-realities and to try to discover something we can do about them, it is necessary to examine their internal logic and moral systems in more detail.

Ideological Paralogic

(...)

The role paralogic plays in being parallel to logic but for a false reality is crucial to understand. It reliably leads (very) smart, thoughtful people who utterly reject the pseudo-reality—and yet who remain mostly ignorant of its paralogical structure—to carry water for the ideologues inhabiting it by normalizing it while portraying accurate critics as kooks and bad actors. In fact, these (very smart) people are generating the smokescreen to the broader normal public that makes the pseudo-reality look far more reasonable and tethered to reality than it actually is. This intellectual manipulation of (very smart) people is a crucial factor in the establishment of any successful large-scale pseudo-reality, which will only be able to maintain a relatively small proportion of true believers. Of note, nobody is better at this than an educated or credentialed liberal who stands to lose a lot by being branded a kook or bad actor by other useful idiots.

QuoteIdeological Paramorality

Alongside the paralogical structure used to trick useful idiots into defending the ideological pseudo-reality project is a powerful tool of social enforcement using an ostensibly moral dimension. (...) The goal of the paramorality is to socially enforce the belief that good people accept the paramorality and attendant pseudo-reality while everyone else is morally deficient and evil. That is, it is an inversion of morality, the slave morality as described by Nietzsche in his Genealogy of Morals.

Because the paramorality is, in fact, immoral, participants in the pseudo-reality will experience vigorous, usually totalitarian, enforcement of the ideological paramorality. It is in this way that the requisite social pressure is created to maintain the lie and its immoral system. In turn, following the cycle of abuse, they will then use the same tenets and tactics to (para)-moralize normal people outside of it, eventually far more vigorously. (...) Again, this is the true alchemy of the pseudo-realist program; it transforms normal, moral people into immoral agents who must perpetrate evil to feel good and perceive as evil those who do good.

(...) Vicious moralizing that will eventually justify violence, including on wide scales, is an eventual guarantee of such demands, if they are enabled sufficiently to shift that power to the ideologues.

This guarantees the paramorality of an ideological pseudo-reality will always be repressive and totalitarian. Dissent and doubt cannot be tolerated, and disagreement must be cordoned off into a moral pit that adherents dare not approach. (...) These bogus constructions are meant to unilaterally shift power to the ideologues so that their pseudo-reality can remain propped up.

(...) This implies that an ideological pseudo-reality's most successful means of gaining strength is through appealing to the perceived victimhood of those people and whipping up the grievances of those who have suffered similar injustices with more dignity. When widely empowered, this should be treated as another symptom of impending civilizational calamity and a need to identify and reject the pseudo-reality manipulating these feelings.

(...)

Psychopathy and Pseudo-reality

(...) If we take a step back to consider our delusional cultist upon which the entire analysis began, we can glean another important point about the nature of ideological pseudo-realities that has been repeatedly intimated so far. That is this: it is easy to perceive that this hypothetical person not only might be but probably is psychopathic to a certain degree if he is creating a cult ideology and attendant pseudo-reality. Pseudo-reality is not the domain of the sane, by definition, and wishing to enforce one's pathologies upon others for one's own benefit, especially through manipulation of their vulnerabilities, is as near to a simple, general definition of psychopathy as one could hope to read.

QuoteMost concerningly, psychopathic ideologies reliably generate (temporary but) functional psychopathy in otherwise normal people who, by means of these manipulations, become sufficiently convicted fellow travelers with and sympathizers to the ideology. Quite literally, aside from the direct effects of demoralization and the destabilization caused by the growing drift of their beliefs away from reality and toward unreality (pseudo-reality), a psychopathic ideology makes its sympathizers believe and act in psychopathic ways themselves, at least in a functional sense. These are the demands and costs of upholding the paralogic (so as not to be a "fool" in pseudo-reality) and paramorality (so as not to be the wrong kind of person in pseudo-reality), and slowly these victims of the ideology become the monsters they were too weak to fight. As noted previously, virtues like tolerance and empathy are intentionally perverted until they begin to bifurcate so that they carry a political valence (paramorality good, morality bad) that increasingly favors the pseudo-real ideology and becomes legitimately psychopathic as the effect strengthens.

QuoteImportantly, this circumstance implies that the average "fellow traveler" in a cult ideology not only does not realize they're a cultist who is using tools and tactics of manipulation (paralogic and paramorality) on people in their lives, both normal and ideologically "awakened" fellow cultists; they cannot realize this without first abandoning the paralogic and paramorality that has captured them and rejecting the ideological pseudo-reality in a fundamental way. They find themselves in the broken position not only of being functionally psychopathic but also of being reality-inverted such that they believe all normal people who are not (yet) cultists are the cultists while they, themselves, are not. This represents a complete reversal of sanity, and the conversion of normal to ideologically psychopathic is, by that point, complete. These people, as many have learned the hard way throughout history, are the otherwise good people who are capable of perpetrating genocides.

Cutting the Threads

What, then, could possibly be the answer to this perilous and perennial tangle? Fortunately, the first step, at the least, is very simple. It's mere awareness. It is learning to recognize the constructed pseudo-reality for what it is—a fabricated simulation of reality that is unfit for human societies—and beginning to reject unapologetically any demand to participate in it. (...)

This can only be done by learning enough to see the games, telling the truth, and refusing to be coerced or forced to participate in the increasingly hegemonic pseudo-reality before it claims totalitarian power.  Speaking practically, there are two straightforward ways this can be done. One is to refute the pseudo-reality, and the other is to reject it.

For most people, the latter of these is easier than the former, and it requires less of someone. Strength of will and character will suffice. (...)

Refuting pseudo-reality is harder, as it requires much more specific knowledge along with skill, strength of character, and courage. It also must be done, at least by someone, if an ideological pseudo-reality has already taken root. Such a pseudo-reality has to be shown to be a false reality, which is to say a pernicious fiction, to as many people as possible. (...)

Commonly, also, this process will not be comfortable and requires tremendous courage of precisely the kind that ideological demoralization is very effective at eroding and containing. The paralogic will interpret direct dissent as stupid or crazy, and the paramorality will characterize it as evil (or motivated by evil intentions, even if unconscious ones outside of the dissenter's awareness). The courage to bear these outrageous insults and slander, and to bear its unjust social consequences, is therefore a necessary precondition to putting a halt to totalitarianism. It is understandable why most will not choose this path, but be warned: the longer one waits, the worse this gets.

(...)

(...) Some more backbone can be dredged up by realizing that once the pseudo-real begins displacing the real for even a few percent of the population, the question is no longer whether things will go bad but how bad they will go before the bubble bursts. Reality will always win, and calamity comes in proportion to the size of the lie between us and it, so it is better to act sooner than later. Still more heart resides in grasping that it gets worse right up until a real resistance mounts, and then, after a rocky transition, it starts getting better. The time to act is therefore now.
(...)

QuoteAn 18-Year-Old Saw Her Mom, Aunt, And Uncle In DC In A Video — So She Named Them

(...)

Her mom, Therese Duke, had told her vaguely that she was taking Helena's aunt for a procedure. But Helena suspected that her Trump-supporting mom may have secretly traveled to Washington, DC, for the delusional last-ditch "Stop the Steal" rally.

(...)

Watching the clip, Helena identified her mom, her aunt Annie Lorenz, and her uncle Richard Lorenz as part of a group of white people confronting a Black woman who had hit Therese in the face after she had tried to grab her. ("grab her, ei ...)

"My initial reaction was more like, Oh my gosh, I was right. I was actually right about them being there," Helena told BuzzFeed News. "It was very surreal because it was an insane video, first of all, and then it was the revelation that, Oh, that's my mother. That's her."

The Black woman in the video had tweeted that a group of five people were harassing her for a long time and had tried to take her belongings from her hands and her pockets. (She declined to comment on the incident to BuzzFeed News without legal representation ( :roll:). Helena's family members did not respond to emails and calls requesting comment.)

(...)

"I think it kind of makes me feel better knowing other people have gone through the same thing," she said. "I obviously feel very sad that they have to go through it, too, but that I'm not alone, and that they're not alone."

(...)

It's unclear if Helena's family members were at the Capitol on Wednesday, when thousands of Trump supporters incited by him descended on the building to try to overturn the election that he lost.

(...)

The next day, after Therese texted saying she was home, Helena simply responded, "how's your nose."

"Please call me or talk to me if you really wanna know," her mom wrote.

Her mom and aunt — whom she said she was close to until their relationship broke down in recent years — have sent her pleas and threats to remove her tweets.

(...)

"I honestly don't think I did anything wrong in this situation," Helena said.

(...)

"She told me she thought Black Lives Matter was a violent organization and they would be inciting violence," she recalled.

"I always felt almost heartbroken over how they viewed the world and how skewed it was and how they wouldn't allow me to express my views. But showing that they can act in such a horrible way is just really appalling to me," she said. "I am honestly very disappointed to have to be part of this family that is so...just, very not welcoming or supportive. I don't feel safe being part of this family."

QuoteVuonna 1932 julkistettu tarina kertoo, että 13-vuotias Pavlik Morozov oli ilmiantanut oman isänsä viljan piilottamisesta kulakkien kanssa, minkä takia tämä joutui vankilaan ja hänet ammuttiin myöhemmin. Vihastuneiden sukulaisten väitettiin surmanneen Pavlikin. Pavlikista tehtiin määrätietoisella kampanjoinnilla esimerkillinen nuorukainen, joka oli asettanut neuvostomaan edun oman etunsa edelle. Hänen tarinastaan tehtiin elämäkertoja, näytelmiä, patsaita, sinfoninen runo, ooppera sekä vaille ensi-iltaa jäänyt ja sittemmin kadonnut elokuva (Sergei Eisensteinin Bežinin niityt). Pavlikin tarinalla vaikutettiin neuvostoliittolaisiin lapsiin ja innostettiin heitä ilmiantamaan vanhempansa.

Quote(...)

Proponents Must Want Division

Again, as I have read the executive order several times, I'm perplexed as to why any American or reasonable and decent human being living in the twenty-first century would want it overturned. Since many do, since presumably a Biden administration will as well, and since I try not to assume people are as evil as they often sound in ignorance, I have to assume the executive order has not been widely or properly read. Nevertheless, as we can see from Section 10 above, the order only prohibits applying the "divisive concepts" listed in Section 2(a) and then only in particular ways. It's therefore important for us to look at these concepts directly from the order and evaluate them.

Before listing them, with commentary, I want to stress why we need to be familiar with what the executive order says. It's very simple. Anyone who wants to overturn this executive order or resist creating copycat orders at the state (or city) level must want to leave room to engage in at least one of the behaviors it prohibits. The questions are "which ones?" and "why?"

Here is the list of prohibited "divisive concepts" given in Section 2(a) of the executive order, with my own commentary added in italics in square brackets added to most of them: (Jameksen kommentit siis hakasuluissa, en lisännyt kursiivia)

(1) one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex [outright bigotry or supremacy—note that this also prohibits white supremacy, patriarchy, (homophobia, ableism, exasperated etc.)];

(2) the United States is fundamentally racist or sexist [i.e., "systemic" bigotry/oppression];

(3) an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously [even by "complicity," like "white complicity" or "brown complicity"];

(4) an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex;

(5) members of one race or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race or sex [this is a repudiation of identity-blindness, e.g., colorblindness, and seeks to make identity, like race, relevant and central to all interactions and phenomena];

(6) an individual's moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex [direct rejection of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" perspective];

(7) an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex [a kind of identity-based "sins of the father" and guilt by association];

(88) any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex [believe it or not, this kind of thing is advocated under Critical Theories of identity (Critical Social Justice) under models like "the pedagogy of discomfort")]; or

(9) meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by a particular race to oppress another race [this ideology rejects meritocracy].

The term "divisive concepts" also includes any other form of race or sex stereotyping or any other form of race or sex scapegoating.

Anyone who is calling for this order to be overturned or who is arguing against passing it into law, both on the federal level or, hopefully, on the state levels, must be held to account on this point: they must want to leave room to engage in at least one of the eleven things listed above. We have to ask them which ones and why.

If you find someone who is against this order or similar, ask them what it is they disagree with. Have then be specific—which "divisive tenets" do you want to engage in and why? Ask them:

Do you want to claim that certain identities are inherently superior to others? If so, why?

Do you want to claim that the United States is fundamentally bigoted? If so, why?

Do you want to claim that certain individuals—because of who they happen to be in terms of identity factors like race, sex, (gender, sexuality, disability, exasperated etc.)—are intrinsically bigoted or complicit in bigotry? If so, why?

Do you think that people should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of factors of identity? If so, why?

Do you think that people should have to treat people according to their identities instead of as equals? If so, why?

Do you believe that people's moral character is in some way determined by who they happen to be? If so, why?

Do you believe that people should be held morally responsible for things that were done by other people who happen to have the same identity factors that they do? If so, why?

Do you think that people should be made to feel uncomfortable (or in anguish!) over factors of their identity? If so, why?

Do you want to say that merit was not a significant, if not the, determining factor in how people came to occupy the professional positions they occupy? If so, why?

Do you wish to engage in identity-based stereotyping of some other kind? If so, why?

Do you wish to engage in identity-based scapegoating of some other kind? If so, why?

These questions must be asked clearly and repeatedly of anyone who condemns this executive order (...) (...)

Quote from: jetsku on 11.01.2021, 14:34:53
"I don't feel safe being part of this family."

Tämä on nykymaailmassa äärimmäisen surullinen ilmiö. Samanlaisia avautumisia näkee jenkkiläisessä somessa jonkin verran.

Kyseinen perhe ei siis ikinä ole harjoittanut sen enempää henkistä kuin fyysistäkään väkivaltaa tätä nuorta kohtaan. He ovat varmaankin jyrkästi eri mieltä poliittisista asioista, mutta mitä ilmeisimmin perhe on ollut mitä rakastavin. On ihan kauheaa sanoa - etenkin julkisesti - ettei tunne oloaan turvalliseksi. Ymmärrän sen, jos pelissä on päihteitä, väkivaltaa, mielenterveysjuttuja ja muuta, mutta... No voisi itse tietysti miettiä, jos vanhemmat sanoisivat, etteivät tunne oloaan turvalliseksi lapsensa kanssa, koska lapsella on erilaisia poliittisia mielipiteitä.

QuoteSuch an interesting (and alarming) social phenomenon that people in the safest, most prosperous, liberal societies in all of human history- are also the most fragile, angry, ungrateful, and believe themselves to be 'oppressed'.
3:13 AM · Dec 16, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteOnly people who've never experienced actual violence, are ignorant & arrogant enough to call words 'violence'.
4:28 AM · Dec 16, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteCancel culture operates with a similar psychological mechanism to the way fundamentalist religions treat sinners or heretics.

Vilifying or demonising, public shamings, the cancellee is labelled as 'bad', and then ostracised from the community.
1:55 AM · Dec 17, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteCancel culture in the west is alarmingly like the 'religious police' in the east.

They 'promote virtue & prevent vice'. They not only arrest & whip/stone 'sinners', they encourage citizens to police each other. So everyone remains in a state of fear- including of each other.
4:41 AM · Dec 17, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteHuman beings have evolved to overcome adversity, obstacles & challenges.

People who have had little to no adversity- or worse, too much comfort & coddling- seem to create 'adversity' & 'oppressions' to overcome.
5:56 AM · Dec 18, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteSocialists aren't bad people, conservatives aren't bad people- 'bad' people are the ones who make an extremist dogmatic ideology out of their beliefs- and then force it down everyone else's throats.

PS: the woke are bad people
😆
7:00 AM · Dec 18, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteCoddling is not love. It's incapacitation- the psychological form of foot binding.

It's subliminally communicating: 'you are incapable, fragile, weak but very special'.

This is not love, it is the devouring mother.
5:47 PM · Dec 18, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteIf you know someone who's being 'cancelled'- but they've only ever treated you well, been kind, empathetic- and you turn away or against them.

Out of schadenfreude, or cowardice, because you think compliance will make the crocodile eat you last.

You're spineless.
1:51 AM · Dec 19, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteThe woke made me anti-woke.

Not 'right wing' propaganda. No other influence.

It was the them- witnessing their cruel behaviour, cancel culture, censorship, anti-science rhetoric, more than anything their cruelty & venom. I couldn't support that.

They radicalised me.
3:29 AM · Dec 19, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteTo be clear:
- I said they 'radicalised' me, because that is their jargon, I don't really think I'm radicalised.
- I'm not on the right, not that there's anything wrong with being a conservative.
- I'm a heterodox liberal.
- I'm anti-woke.
4:12 AM · Dec 19, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteOver validating & coddling as a parenting strategy were supposedly to raise self-esteem, regardless of behaviour.

Instead it's created incomprehensible levels of entitlement, ineptitude & emotional fragility- bc self-esteem not based on anything is narcissism.
6:06 AM · Dec 21, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteDeplatforming: The astronomically narcissistic & entitled demand that people you don't agree with should be removed from a platform.

But if you block them or delete one of their comments, they will try to cancel you FOR SILENCING THEM.
😂
6:52 AM · Dec 21, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

Quote1/ Wokeness is an ideology- and a poorly thought out one. It encourages division, hierarchies of 'oppression', public confessions of sin, and doesn't base it's assertions off data.

It's instruments are antisocial behaviour based on moral elitism: attacks, doxxing, cancelling.
7:50 PM · Dec 22, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

Quote2/ Moral elitism means the woke, who think they're morally superior, have carte blanche to attack the morally 'inferior'. This is how fundamentalist religions behave.

This has absolutely nothing to do with having a social conscience- and everything to do with power & compliance.
7:53 PM · Dec 22, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteWhat's the polar opposite of The Enlightenment?

That's what we're living through.
6:12 PM · Dec 23, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteI've never experienced as much blatant racism as I have this year from (mostly) white progressives.

They use other white people as punching bags, pick on minorities and then congratulate themselves on their 'advocacy'.

Brava, you are an imbecilic scourge on society.
7:39 AM · Dec 24, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteWoke authoritarianism has created a culture where verbal, psychological & emotional abuse have became permissible.

It's now socially acceptable to abuse people, under the guise of 'advocacy'. This is a safe haven for abusers.
7:45 AM · Dec 25, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteMany of us 'minorities' in the west, come from places that are actually oppressive & unsafe, and where we were traumatised.

We come to the west and find safety, freedom & opportunity.

It might not be perfect, but I'm profoundly grateful.
6:07 PM · Dec 25, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteThe woke can't understand this because their rhetoric has no nuance. It's a binary, oppressor/oppressed.

It's a monumental insult to be called a victim when you have survived so much. Especially by people so emotionally fragile that if you don't do as they say, they attack you.
9:51 PM · Dec 25, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuotePeople who decry 'bootstrapping', personal responsibility, and hard work as sinister byproducts of capitalism are lying to you.

You're being set up to fail.
8:43 PM · Dec 26, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteIt's the weirdest thing & I cannot STAND it. The woke talk in a strange therapy/woke language & use it to torture each other & everyone else.

They misapply jargon, give it a faux sugary sweet coating, and then use it as a weapon.
5:42 AM · Dec 28, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteIf you swap words like problematic, harmful', 'ist & 'phobe (when no ism or phobia has taken place)-

and insert in their place 'blasphemer' or 'heretic', you will better understand what is going on.

You are being punished for being a non believer.
6:28 PM · Dec 29, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteI'm sorry to say it, I don't like stereotyping like this, but the every time I get a comment that's really nasty- and I mean *really* nasty. The kind of comment that leaves you winded for a second because it was so personal, low & shockingly cruel. It's always the woke. Always.
3:07 PM · Dec 30, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteWhy is it only woke 'lived experience' that is 'valid'- and never the people who disagree or point out obvious flaws in their ideology?

It's almost like it's *gasp* not about 'lived experience' at all...
9:19 PM · Dec 30, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteIt's hard to describe how awful racism feels. Even harder to describe the unwelcome feeling of being fetishised as 'woman of colour' by the woke when it suits them- and then scapegoated when it doesn't.

It might actually feel worse.
8:15 PM · Jan 8, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteThe thing I still cannot get my head around is how therapists & psychologists who should have a solid grasp of human behaviour, motivations, disordered & distorted thinking, not only can't see what is going on- they are active participants in making things worse.
10:59 PM · Jan 9, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteOne of the things that struck me from being around the woke is how gullible & suggestible they are.

Someone just has to say, 'we think this now', and they all unquestioningly comply & bend their minds to make it fit. No questions, no data analysis, no fact checking.
6:41 AM · Jan 10, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuotePainful truth:
It doesn't matter how good your argument is or how carefully you deliver it, if the other person's *goal* is to misunderstand & devalue you.

In instances like this, disengage, don't waste your energy. It can be very painful, but don't forget: YOU know who you are.
10:08 PM · Jan 11, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

Quote'Social justice' movements crystallised because there was a need to address the inequality faced primarily by people of colour.

Cut to 2021: Woke white people take on oppressed identities & then use their social capital to harass people of colour for not being woke.
2:39 AM · Jan 13, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteWokeness is an ideology that pretends to be about 'social justice', but really it's a proxy for abusing power.

Actual justice would do something useful, not focus on changing around letters in words & cancelling anyone that doesn't believe in it.
3:31 AM · Jan 13, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteBIPOC is a acronym the woke came up. It's incredibly arrogant to come up with an acronym for such a diverse group, shove us all into it, and then start speaking for us.

They say we're not a monolith, and then speak for ALL black indigenous people of colour.
3:41 PM · Jan 13, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteCritical theory teaches that one must enter situations seeking to find what is 'problematic'. To filter out what's good & seek out problems.

This is conditioning the mind into a negative confirmation bias, which is also a feature of mood disorders like clinical depression.
7:49 AM · Jan 14, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteWe find ourselves in a very dark day collectively, culturally. Where the most ineffectual, resentful, fragile, and malevolent among us are attempting to exercise absolute power.

A cult is dictating culture.
4:02 AM · Jan 16, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteYou can speak the truth, or you can be woke.

It's not possible to be both, because the latter is a movement based on narrative untruths.
3:53 AM · Jan 17, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteHow the Left Hijacked Civil Rights

For centuries black Americans debated how to overcome racism—but they always emphasized human agency and individual responsibility.

(...)(...)

One of the original arguments to justify slavery was that blacks were morally inferior and thus incapable of self-government. John C. Calhoun famously asserted: "There is no instance of any civilized colored race of any shade being found equal to the establishment and maintenance of free government." Black efforts at self-liberation in the 19th and 20th centuries were based on the opposite assumption.

Today many black leaders defer to angry white progressives who make the same arguments about blacks' lack of moral agency, reject the country's founding principles, and seek to undermine its institutions. For months, the radical left has been exploiting the country's genuine concern for fairness to keep blacks in a constant state of agitation, anger and grievance, urging them toward behavior that lives down to the slanderous stereotypes of white supremacists. The leaders of these movements insist that every inequity suffered by blacks is caused by institutional and structural racism, that they have no power to liberate themselves, and that they will remain oppressed until white people change. Even to raise the issue of what role self-determination plays for blacks earns you the label of "racist."

Civil-rights organizations and their leadership, as well as the Congressional Black Caucus, need to wake up before it's too late. A faction of black leaders has been silent about, or complicit in, the takeover of the civil-rights movement by the radical left. The effect of this is not to glorify black achievement but to crucify low-income blacks, who are represented in national media outlets by their worst-behaved members, and bear the brunt of the attacks by the woke radical left on the cities where they live.

"Justice" for black America cannot be achieved by framing it solely through the distorted lens of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others in fatal police encounters. For every unarmed black American killed by the police, hundreds are killed in neighborhood homicides.

Those who call for the defunding of police departments, such as leaders of the official Black Lives Matter organization, are silent about this inconvenient truth. They have a narrative and cannot let the facts get in the way. Their story is that the whole of American history is stained and the whole of America must be overthrown.  (...)

Like all Americans, blacks have triumphed over their circumstances only when they have adopted bourgeois virtues such as hard work, respect for learning, self-discipline, faith and personal responsibility. In the 19th century, Frederick Douglass found reading to be the key to his own personal liberation amid slavery, and he understood that whites deliberately withheld literacy from blacks precisely because it was so valuable. Bourgeois values drove blacks to build the powerful religious, fraternal, and other voluntary associations that helped them thrive in the worst days of Jim Crow and cultivated the essential virtues in the next generation.

There would have been no civil-rights movement without this. But radical progressives now insist that such virtues are the legacy of white supremacy, colonialist values that reflect the continuing bondage of blacks to oppressive Western culture. The only "authentic" expression of blackness in America, they claim, is the opposite of bourgeois self-restraint and discipline—indulging in the passions of the moment, whether anarchic rioting, insulting teachers or other unsalutary forms of expression. The radical left—disdaining exhortations toward work, family and faith as "respectability politics"—argues that blacks should feel free to indulge their "true" nature, echoing the age-old white-supremacist notion that said nature is violent, lascivious and incapable of self-restraint.

The slave masters' trick of old was to dissuade blacks from adopting bourgeois values precisely so they could be kept in servitude. (...)

We must turn away from the present course, which preaches despair rather than hope. Black achievement must be glorified. The crucifixion of black America by the radical left must halt. There is a grander, more fruitful future for us all.

QuoteCritical Race Theory's Jewish Problem

Critical Race Theory has a Jewish problem, and, finally, people are beginning to notice. "Stop being shocked," implores Bari Weiss, formerly of the New York Times, writing for the Jewish commentary magazine Tablet. Stop starting off sentences with "can you believe...?" It's a staggering article that cannot be recommended highly enough.

To understand the enormity of the change we are now living through, take a moment to understand America as the overwhelming majority of its Jews believed it was—and perhaps as we always assumed it would be. It was liberal. Not liberal in the narrow, partisan sense, but liberal in the most capacious and distinctly American sense of that word: the belief that everyone is equal because everyone is created in the image of God. ... No longer. American liberalism is under siege. There is a new ideology vying to replace it.

Weiss is correct in her diagnosis and in her identification of the underpinnings of the new ideology replacing liberalism. She describes it as "a mixture of postmodernism, postcolonialism, identity politics, neo-Marxism, critical race theory, intersectionality, and the therapeutic mentality," to which we should add at least a few drops of the Rousseauian assignment of primacy to instinct, emotion, intuition, feelings, and passion over reason and evidence. The only place her description leaves anything to be desired is in her claim that "No one has yet decided on the name for the force that has come to unseat liberalism." That may well be the case in that we haven't decided on the name we'll use for this ideology, but it does have a name. This ideology is called by at least some of its proponents by the name "Critical Social Justice." In short, Critical Social Justice—colloquially "Wokeness"—is a toxic fusion of cherry-picked aspects of the many lines of thought just identified, each chosen for its practical utility in advancing its particular line of fundamentally anti-liberal activism.

QuoteThis wretched analysis positions Jews very badly in a paradigm that is only equipped to think about race in terms of zero-sum conflicts for societal standing and resources. Jewish "whiteness" is believed to be established beyond a shadow of a doubt not just by the (allegedly false) embrace by "white" society but also by having thrown blacks under the bus. This status is made more concrete by reframing Jewish success in many industries as having usurped the hyper-privileged mantle of being the top producers and influencers of "white culture." And all the while, the Jews can point to millennia of oppression and a Holocaust that some, now very few, can still remember surviving.

Here, then we discover a straightforward contradiction that Critical Race Theory is poorly equipped to resolve: in the final analysis, are (white) Jews oppressed or oppressors? This question is generative of the fundamental and unavoidable contradiction that deserves to be called Critical Race Theory's Jewish problem. (...)

That is to say, Critical Race Theory interprets very badly, bordering on horrifically, the fundamental contradiction it, itself, produces by adopting an anti-liberal stance and assigning Jews to privilege within it. It views Jews, or Ashkenazim at least, as not only as being white but also as occupying the highest echelons of privilege within a white society that has embraced them in a way that multiplied other axes of racial oppression deemed ideologically fatal to the entire project of liberalism. Simultaneously, it sees them as the bearers of a kind of shield that prevents them from their necessary obligation of "checking their privilege" so long as they identify first as Jews and only later as "white" and believe the history that makes them who they are has any truth and significance to it. That is, Critical Race Theory interprets Jewish status as being rather illegitimately placed among the most privileged in society even while they enjoy an even further privilege in not having to accept themselves as such. If anti-Semitism is a hatred of Jews born of believing them to be illegitimately privileged, this kind of analysis is quite literally the stuff of horrors.

QuoteThe physical safety of Jews—and of Israel—depends upon liberalism and thus cannot be guaranteed by anything that accepts Critical Race Theory and Postcolonial Theory. Those two, together, like so many hideous ideologies before them, generate a Jewish question they cannot answer which results in a Jewish problem they cannot solve.

Critical Social Justice has a Jewish problem. Jews are Theorized at the height of white privilege—illegitimately and to the detriment of other minorities—and as the minority usurpers of the coveted status of being "the interpreters of white society." Yet they also carry an ironclad reason not to "interrogate" that privilege as the Critical Theories of Social Justice demand of them, which Theory must therefore dismiss as illegitimate. Furthermore, Jews are not just complicit in whiteness but also in one of the most intolerable acts of Western colonialism that Theory takes umbrage with: the establishment of the state of Israel on land it deems wholly Palestinian. This crime they can also plausibly deny on the grounds that they were, in fact, driven from that, their indigenous, land in acts of unequivocal acts of oppression and genocidal violence.

In Theory, Jews aren't just at the height of privilege in their whiteness and in an unjustly granted colony in Israel. They're also deemed privileged even further by having a cultural history that liberal people rightly believe is characterized by millennia of systemic oppression. They're a dominant group that nobody outside of Theory—least of all themselves—regards as dominant.

These are evil ideas that are new only in their outermost manifestation: "whiteness," "colonizer," "settler." They, are anti-Semitism that, like their predecessors, are the results of forcing bad solutions to fundamental contradictions that necessarily arise from within the bowels of impoverished and illiberal social theories. In liberalism, as Weiss observes, we have at the heart "the idea that we should judge each person not by their station or their family lineage but by their deeds" and "that human beings have agency," which she also notes "are revolutionary ideas that are, at root, Hebrew ones." In Theory, one's station—called "positionality"—is the main dimension of judgment and human beings who lack a critical consciousness—who aren't "Woke" and in agreement with Theory—necessarily have a false consciousness, like "internalized dominance," and no true agency.

At the moment, we are losing liberalism to Critical Social Justice, which isn't just inimical to liberal beliefs but also believes they must be torn out by the roots—which, if Weiss is right, will include Hebrew roots. This simple truth, hard-learned so many times before about shallow social theory, is a danger to us all. It poses a particular, though not wholly unique, danger to Jews.

For the present, there is still some daylight between Woke anti-Semitism and older, more recognizable forms of Jew-hatred, but there's no guarantee that will stay the case. Indeed, the edifice already seems to be crumbling. It's worth stating, then, that the only difference between historical applications of ideologically driven anti-Semitism and Woke anti-Semitism, then, is that the current approach comes at the issue in an apparently novel way by shoehorning Jew-hatred into a drastically oversimplified framework of American racial history—one with a great deal of current cultural cache—which is to say that the differences are mostly a matter of window dressing and time. That is to except one other difference: those have no positive branding and no Jewish support, whereas Woke anti-Semitism currently enjoys a reasonable degree of both.

Critical Social Justice is, in its vulgar simplicity and pretentious racism, neither sophisticated nor liberal enough to handle the straightforward facts of Jewish life and history, which make an inconvenient misfit to its profoundly inadequate notions of social power and conflict. It must therefore be said that this paucity of sophistication and liberalism within Theory render the contradictions at hand both unavoidable and irreconcilable for Theory. This, in turn, defines a fundamental and intolerable Jewish problem in Critical Social Justice that, if history writes any guide, will find its "resolution" in the decrees of the Theorists, if they become sufficiently empowered. We must not allow this to happen.

Quote from: zupi on 30.01.2021, 13:22:35
"Hauskintahan" tässä tosiaan on se, että (kuten esim. akez on Hommalla kuvaillut) suuri osa valtamedioista, jotka ajavat tuota CSJ-sontaa, ovat juutalaisten omistuksessa. Kertonee lähinnä ehkä vain siitä, että nuo superrikkaat ovat täysin lahoja ihmisiä, joille ainoastaan raha ja valta merkitsee yhtään mitään.

Quote10 ways to fight back against woke culture

(...)

America is imperfect. (Does it even need to be said?) There is bigotry toward blacks and gays and Jews and immigrants; there is intense polarization; (...)

But there is no gulag in America. There are no laws permitting honor killings. There is no formal social credit system of the kind that exists right now in China. By any measure, we have achieved incredible progress and enjoy extraordinary freedoms. And yet people aren't acting that way. They are acting, increasingly, like subjects in a totalitarian country.

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How much does it cost me to log on to Twitter and accuse you, right now, of an -ism? America is fast developing its own informal social credit system, as the writer Rod Dreher has noted, in which people with the wrong politics or online persona are banned from social media sites and online financial networks.

When everything is recorded for eternity, when making mistakes and taking risks are transformed into capital offenses, when things that were common sense until two seconds ago become unsayable, people make the understandable decision to simply shut up.

Do not nod along when you hear the following: That Abraham Lincoln's name on a public school or his likeness on a statue is white supremacy. (It is not; he is a hero.) That separating people into racial affinity groups is progressive. (It is a form of segregation.) That looting has no victims (untrue) and that small-business owners can cope anyway because they have insurance (nonsense). That any disparity of outcome is evidence of systemic oppression (false). That America is evil. (It is the last hope on Earth.)

This list could go on for a thousand pages. These may have become conventional wisdom in certain circles, but they are lies.

Yet too many good people are sacrificing the common good, and therefore their long-term security, for the sake of short-term comfort.
Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco is at risk of being renamed by woke city leaders.

It's time to stand up and fight back. That means you. Social conservatives. Never-Trump Republicans, and anti-anti-Trump Republicans, too. Lukewarm liberals and libertarians. Progressives who have a little curiosity still left. Exhausted parents who want nothing to do with politics. Joe Rogan stans. Reddit revolutionaries and the hedgies getting crushed. Facebookers and email chainers and Etsy-shop owners and Boomers who still use AOL accounts. Start with the following 10 principles:
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QuoteThis article was originally published in September, 2000, at Le Québécois Libre, it is reproduced with permission from the author.

QuoteWhy the World is the Way It Is: Cultural Relativism and Its Descendents

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Cultural relativism wrongly claims that each culture has its own distinct but equally valid mode of perception, thought, and choice. Cultural relativism, the opposite of the idea that moral truth is universal and objective, contends there is no such thing as absolute right and wrong. There is only right and wrong as specified by the moral code of each society. Within a particular society, a standard of right and wrong can be inviolate. Cultural relativism maintains that man's opinion within a given culture defines what is right and wrong.

Cultural relativism is the mistaken idea that there are no objective standards by which our society can be judged because each culture is entitled to its own beliefs and accepted practices. No one can object to any society's intolerance that reflects its indigenous worldview. Because there is no objective moral truth that pertains to all people and for all times, one moral code is no better or no worse than any other (i.e., the moral equivalence doctrine). Thus, we should not impose our values on other societies. (...)

Multiculturalism, racism, postmodernism, deconstructionism, political correctness, and social engineering are among cultural relativism's "intellectual" descendents.  (...)

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Multiculturalism

The main idea of multiculturalism is the equal value of all cultures (i.e., cultural relativism). However, multiculturalism does not mean cultures as normally understood but rather as biologically defined (i.e., ethnically, racially, or sexually defined) groups. Multiculturalism, a politicized form of cultural relativism, rejects the idea that there are general truths, norms, or rules with respect to both knowledge and morals. Gone are the Enlightenment beliefs in objectivity, reason and evidence, and principles of freedom and justice that apply equally to all individuals. Unlike cultural relativism, multiculturalism excludes one worldview from the realm of equally valid worldviews—the Eurocentric Western perspective based on the contributions of dead white males. Multiculturalists dismiss the significance of Western civilization by claiming that Western traditions of elitism, racism, and sexism are the cause of most of our current problems. They accept a Romantic view of human nature as beneficent and benign until it was corrupted by flawed Western ideology and culture.

Multiculturalism implies that race, ethnicity, and sex (or sexual preference) have an inescapable effect on the way people think and/or the values they hold or are capable of holding.  (...) Multiculturalism thus destroys an individual's confidence in his own mind—this occurs when a person allows his group to tell him what to believe.

At one time, truth was viewed as transcendent, fixed, and unchanging. (...) For the multiculturalist, truth only exists by consensus within each biologically defined group.

Multiculturalism is anti-individualistic in the sense that it expects each person to agree with the perceptions, thoughts, and judgments of his group in order for his own perceptions, thoughts, and judgments to be legitimate. The multiculturalist believes that a person's thoughts are either the collectively constructed thoughts of his racial, ethnic, or sexual group or are the thoughts foisted upon him by the dominant white male worldview. A ruling premise of multiculturalism is that ethnic origin carries with it irrevocable attributes—if a person has a certain name and physical features, then he must have a particular perspective on life and the world. Multiculturalists assign each rational and autonomous individual into a group based on the group's specific, absolute, and nondebatable dissemblances from other groups.

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The victim mentality is both a cause and effect of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism promotes a culture of victims who have a perpetual claim on society and the government. The result is the division of society into political interest groups with conflicting demands that cannot all be met.

Educational proposals from multiculturalists attempt to inculcate in students the idea that Western classical liberal order is, in fact, the most oppressive order of all times. (...)

There would be no harm in multiculturalism if the term simply meant that we should acknowledge and teach truths about many cultures. It is admirable to teach students both the noblest aspects of various cultures and of their failings. Unfortunately, multiculturalism's pluralism and relativism has engendered a reluctance to acknowledge anything positive about Western culture while concurrently maintaining a nonreflective and approving position toward non-Western and minority ideas. Students are taught that no "properly educated" person would be willing to pass judgment on another culture. If a student should deny the equality of all cultures he would be told he was guilty of "ethnocentrism."

(...) Some cultures are better than others: reason is better than force; a free society is superior to slavery; and productivity is better than stagnation.

Multiculturalists argue that education can build the self-esteem of minority students by presenting non-Western cultures in a favorable light in order to compensate for historical and curricular injustices, thereby restoring cultural parity between ethnic groups. Replacing education with therapy, the multiculturalist attempts to enhance self-esteem by teaching the students of oppressed cultures to be proud of their particular ancestry or race. This will only work if there are laudable truths that can be taught about a student's ethnic heritage. When education is turned into therapy, the likely result is to teach history not to ascertain truth but to empower (i.e., enhance the self-esteem) of various factions. The result is the introduction of distortions, half-truths, fabrications, and myths into the curriculum in order to make students from certain groups feel good. In addition, multiculturalists denounce the emphasis in American schools on American history and culture and western civilization. Some even portray western civilization and Americans as evil and ideas such as reason and objective truth as Eurocentric (and patriarchal for the feminist) biases with the purpose of exploiting oppressed cultures.

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Students are instructed that there are no objective merits or failings of theories, arguments, policies, works of art, and literature, etc. Instead, they are only valorizations of power that require deconstruction in order to reveal their true nature as devices of repression. It is Marxism that has provided multiculturalism with its rationale and concepts (e.g., oppression, imperialism, inequality, revolutionary change) that are used to devalue and destroy American culture.

The goal of the multiculturalist is to change the United States from a culturally assimilated society to an unassimilated multicultural society with a wide range of cultures and subcultures accorded equal status. Multiculturalism promotes quotas rather than competition, allocating resources rather than earning them, and a cabinet that looks like America instead of one that has an adequate background to do the required job. Multiculturalists fail to see that the diversity methods they use to find and create diversity will, in fact, divide the country. The result will be a widespread, societal tendency toward hatred, revenge, or belief in the innate superiority of one's group and a feeling of solidarity and self-righteousness.

Racism

Racism, a type of multiculturalism, is the erroneous idea that a person's race determines his identity. It is the belief that one's values, beliefs, and character are determined by one's ancestry rather than by the judgments of one's mind. In the name of diversity and multiculturalism many Americans are taught to base their sense of self in their racial or ethnic identity. In fact, "critical race theory" contends that there is no reality independent of a person's ethnicity, no universal rules of logic, and no objective facts. Accordingly, each person is destined to interpret events according to the sentiments of his racial group. Such an attack on reason creates a herd mentality by which people thoughtlessly follow those who proclaim themselves to be the leaders.

Racial preference is the common ingredient of the diversity movement (i.e., diversity awareness, training, hiring, admissions, accommodations, etc.). Proponents do not realize that racism cannot be cured with more racism. When people are taught to think in racial terms instead of according to individual merit and character, and groups are identified as having special status (e.g., affirmative action programs), the logical result is likely to be warranted resentment and indignation.

Obviously, the rational and proper approach is to evaluate candidates based on individual merit. This simply means appraising candidates based on their possession of relevant knowledge and skills, their willingness to exert the requisite effort, and their possession of a good moral character.

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Individualism is the only acceptable alternative to racism. It is essential to recognize that each person is a sovereign entity with the power of independent judgment and choice.

Political Correctness

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Political correctness (and multiculturalism) threatens free speech in both the academic sphere and the nonacademic workplace and ultimately the very foundation of American society. The government has, in essence, eliminated most free speech protection in the workplace. Free speech, which is an economic good to academics through which they make their living, has fared somewhat better in the educational world.

Broadly conceived, political correctness includes a number of initiatives such as: altering vocabularies in order not to offend particular groups, affirmative action in admissions and hiring, multicultural education, and broadening the scope of classical texts to include those written by minority authors and women. Then there are the workshops in which people are taught by "experts" how to be attuned to others' feelings and how to avoid being found guilty of "sexual harassment," "racial insensitivity," and so on.

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The Philosophy of Social Engineering: A Recent Descendent of Cultural Relativism

The philosophy of social engineering, as reflected in contemporary civil rights policies and agendas, is primarily based on five concepts: collectivism, determinism, economic egalitarianism, elitism, and historical victimization. Multiculturalism, a merger of collectivism and determinism, asserts that no person can avoid the forces imposed by race, ethnicity, gender, etc. Fortunately, according to the proponents of social engineering, there exists an elite able to remedy historical victimization. (...)

The elite includes individuals and groups who far exceed the general population in intellect, morality, and dedication to the "common good." Their general superiority enables them to use their articulated rationality to function as surrogate decision makers in governmental economic and social planning. Their special wisdom, knowledge, virtue, compassion, commitment, and intentions qualify them to guide the actions of the many either through articulation or force. Because the elite tend to assume that human nature is infinitely malleable, they attempt to mold the nature of the people according to their superior judgments and advanced views.

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In his Tyranny of Reason, Yuval Levin explains that the social scientific outlook holds that society and man can be understood through scientific study and that truth in the social world is essentially no different than truth found by science in nature.  (...)

Approaching the human world from the perspective of scientific certainty constrains man's freedom, robs people of a sense of control, and encourages people to hand over their fates to social engineers who believe in the inevitable progress of mankind and in their own superior ability to discover, comprehend, and predict the proper arrangement of society and the underlying truths of the human world. Of course, the knowledge needed by these social architects and constructivists is unattainable––the best we can achieve is partial knowledge of the human world.

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Western Culture Is Objectively Superior

Today, many intellectuals claim that Western culture is not any better (some say it is worse) than other cultures. In addition, they argue that there are no objective standards that can be used to evaluate the moral merit or demerit of various cultures.

In reality, the superiority of Western culture can be objectively demonstrated when cultures are appraised based on the only befitting standard for judging a society or culture—the extent to which its core values are life affirming or antilife. Prolife culture recognizes and honors man's nature as a rational being who needs to discern and produce the circumstances that his survival and flourishing require. Such a culture would promote reason, man's natural rights, productivity, science, and technology. Western culture, the prime example of this type of culture, exhibits levels of freedom, opportunity, health, wealth, productivity, innovation, satisfaction, comfort, and life expectancy unprecedented in history.

Western civilization represents man at his best. It embodies the values that make life as a man possible—freedom, reason, individualism, and man's natural rights; capitalism, self-reliance, and self-responsibility based on free will and achievement; the need for limited, republican representative government and the rule of law; language, art, and literature depicting man as efficacious in the world; and science and technology, the rules of logic, and the idea of causality in a universe governed by natural laws intelligible to man. These values, the values of Western civilization, are values for all men cutting across ethnicity, geography, and gender.

QuoteTime to take critical race theory seriously: moving beyond a colour-blind gender lens in global health

In 2020, as worldwide protests demanded racial justice, the COVID-19 pandemic shed a stark light on racial inequities in global health: one need look no further than the disproportionate burden shouldered by Black and other racial minority groups in the Americas and Europe.1

Yet, despite the purported racial reckoning of the moment, the global health community has been slow to consciously centre race in our work. This seeming racial inertia persists despite fervent advocacy and conceptual rigour around addressing gender inequity, even in the face of ample awareness of the intertwined disadvantages faced worldwide by women who are racial minorities.2,  3

As women of colour scholars, practitioners, and educators whose work addresses race, gender, and class inequity, we recognise that it is vitally important to take a gender lens to addressing health inequities. But this gendered perspective must not be unidimensional. We now call upon our colleagues, particularly influencers in high-income countries, to meaningfully engage with critical race theory, a transdisciplinary intellectual movement to understand and disrupt systemic racism. Of particular relevance to these efforts is the concept of intersectionality, a central tenet of critical race theory coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe how multiple social categorisations—such as race and gender—interact and confer interlocking oppressions and privileges.4

This intentional centring of race in global health will help to achieve the mutually reinforcing goals of eradicating both racial and gender inequity. As a point of departure, we articulate the multiple racial contexts of the global health sector, with the aim of moving beyond a colour-blind gender lens.

We are pleased that scholars and advocates of global health and gender now acknowledge the importance of explicating the interlocking oppressions of gender inequity and racism, among other "-isms".2,  5

For decades, the concept of intersectionality has been foundational to scholarship addressing systemic racism, most prominently in the USA with respect to simultaneous oppressions due to race and gender.4,  6

Nowadays, concepts such as intersectionality are also applied to other social categories, such as religion, nationality, and socioeconomic status.3

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As delineated in Ford and Airhihenbuwa's Public Health Critical Race Praxis,6 we must first develop a consciousness about the intersecting racial contexts of global health work. The notion of racial consciousness should ring familiar to those who use a gender lens to understand how health is influenced by gendered biases and norms. Like gender's problematic binary of male versus female, race is a complex social construct with biological implications, the classifications of which vary across history and geography.8

(...)

At national, subnational, and community levels, systemic racism is often embedded in policies and hegemonic Euro-American sociocultural frameworks. (...) Within each context, acknowledgement and redress of racialised, gendered power imbalances are long overdue.

Current impassioned conversations about systemic racism present an opportunity to embrace race as an omnipresent factor influencing global health practice, research, and outcomes. This racial consciousness needs to be part and parcel of our efforts to address gender inequity worldwide. Now, more than ever, we must centre our work on people at the racial margins, in each of the intersecting racial contexts of the global health sector. Only then will we develop an essential sense of humility and self-awareness to be antiracist in our work.

QuoteDenounce Black Peter – or else!

How a London loneliness charity excluded an old man for not conforming to its anti-racist agenda

John looked forward to his regular Zoom meetings with South London Cares, a charity that's part of a group of five similar non-profits set up by an ex-Labour spin doctor called Alex Smith. Established in 2014, its raison d'être is to introduce older people living on their own to community-minded young professionals in the hope of making them feel less lonely. (...)

But all that changed on 2 December 2020. John was in a Zoom meeting called "South London Stories", along with two dozen others, when one of the young thrusters raised the subject of Zwarte Piet (Black Peter). (...) Needless to say, Zwarte Piet has been the subject of considerable controversy in these countries, with critics claiming the character is a legacy of their colonial past. Nonetheless, he remains a popular figure in Holland, with most Dutch citizens supporting the tradition and saying they don't regard Zwarte Piet as racist.

(...) He wasn't inclined to vigorously defend the tradition, which he didn't know much about, but he didn't think it was right to condemn the folklore of another culture. John is well-travelled and he's learnt not to be too judgmental when it comes to other people's traditions. So when it was his turn to speak he said he didn't find the character particularly offensive.

Afterwards, he got a call from a South London Cares employee who told him he'd given the wrong answer. Zwarte Piet was a racist tradition (...) But it was a hurtful thing to say nonetheless and his comment had been recorded as an "overt act of racism". He was told that he was being given a formal warning and if he wanted to avoid a "red notice", which would result in him being banned from any further meetings, he had to apologise to the group and commit to understanding where he went wrong so he could do better.

John was slightly taken aback. He had thought the charity wanted to make people like him feel wanted and loved and hadn't expected to be chided for being politically incorrect. (...) To John, it felt as if he was being asked to engage in some ritual of self-abasement – to apologise on behalf of the white race for the sins of colonialism and slavery.

Many people in his position would have crumbled under this pressure, but not John. He politely explained that he had nothing to apologise for – he couldn't help it if he didn't find Zwarte Piet offensive – and a few weeks later he received an official letter telling him he'd been banned.

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To my weathered eye, there was another explanation: South London Cares, like so many other charities, may have been captured by the woke cult. (...) Instead of mobilising young professionals to provide support and companionship to older people, its mission is to re-educate these unenlightened dinosaurs — creating a valuable social network and then threatening them with excommunication if they don't produce the right Pavlovian responses to "racist stereotypes".

In the letter John received telling him he was no longer welcome, the charity included a long list of thoughtcrimes, including "microassaults", "microinvalidation" and "microinsults" ("Suggesting a black volunteer and black neighbour may get along based on skin colour"). (...)

Needless to say, South London Cares receives plenty of money from the state (...)

QuoteFor this exclusive YouTube special, Sebastian talks to author James Lindsay about the true motivations behind Critical Race Theory and other radical ideas that are behind the Biden agenda.

QuoteCultural Marxism is a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory which claims Western Marxism as the basis of continuing academic and intellectual efforts to subvert Western culture.[1][2][3] The conspiracists claim that an elite of Marxist theorists and Frankfurt School intellectuals are subverting Western society with a culture war that undermines the Christian values of traditionalist conservatism and promotes the cultural liberal values of the 1960s counterculture and multiculturalism, progressive politics and political correctness, misrepresented as identity politics created by critical theory.[2][3][4]

While the theory originated in the United States during the 1990s,[5](Abstract) it entered mainstream discourse in the 2010s and is promoted globally.[5] Today, the conspiracy theory of Marxist culture war is promoted by right-wing politicians, fundamentalist religious leaders, political commentators in mainstream print and television media and white supremacist terrorists.[6] Scholarly analysis of the conspiracy theory has concluded that it has no basis in fact and is not based on any actual intellectual tendency.[5][7]

QuoteThe tradition of Marxist cultural analysis since the 1930s has occasionally also been referred to as "cultural Marxism".[5][6] Since the 1990s, the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory emerged, a highly influential discourse on the far right without any clear relationship to Marxist cultural analysis.[7][8]

QuoteA First-Amendment Case for Freedom from the Woke Religion

Introduction

The question of whether or not the worldview and practice—for practice it intentionally is—going variously by the names "Social Justice," "Critical Social Justice," or, more colloquially, "Woke" constitutes a religion is one of some general interest that seems to be growing. Until quite recently, we maintained the luxury of not having to treat the matter more deeply than as something of a curio of sociocultural philosophy, however important the issue may be. I have contended, for example, that Critical Social Justice constitutes a religion of sorts (a postmodern one, as I laid it out at considerable length; a nominally "anti-racist" one, as Columbia University professor John McWhorter is tackling it currently, at book length) and must be thought of as such, at least by everyday citizens—though not by the law. Those were simpler times.

Now things are quite different and much more serious, so a much more serious inquiry is demanded of us. This escalation arrives not so much due to the externally obvious reasons like how profoundly parallel to religion Critical Social Justice and its practice have become—literally washing black people's feet in the streets through tearful apologies against whiteness—but more because of its rapid and seemingly unstoppable penetration into our public institutions, including government at every level and, more importantly, our public schools.

It is nearly always a question of considerable importance and some urgency when an ideology, especially when it comprises a totalizing worldview, decides that it is to be the fundamental basis for how we organize society and educate our children, to say nothing of other legal concerns. This, to be certain, is happening now with astonishing rapidity. The overwhelming majority of our schools systems' teacher training over the summer of 2020, to prepare teachers for the new mostly-online educational demands for the coming fall term, have been heavily, if not exclusively, about issues pertinent to Critical Social Justice. Our government agencies at all levels are taking on the basic principles and tenets of this belief system as matters of both policy and recommendation.

With astonishing speed, a shocking number of our nation's school systems have taken up explicitly critical—as in Critical Theory—educational approaches that focus on teaching identity politics, "anti-racism," and about the systems of power that the Critical Social Justice worldview assumes exists in everything. States like Washington, California, and New York are openly adopting "Ethnic Studies" programs that revamp their entire educational systems in line with Critical Social Justice so extreme that they seek to replace math with "ethnomathematics" and history with critical "hxstory." These changes come alongside other equally questionable practices with even more jargon-heavy descriptions, all dedicated to awakening a "critical consciousness" of "anti-racism" through "cultural awareness" in our nation's children. Our curricula, we're told, have to be "decolonized." New curricula are explicitly based not only in Critical Theories of identity, but upon the critical historiography of the infamously revisionist (and Pulitzer Prize-winning) 1619 Project and the explicit dictates of the radical Black-power activism organization Black Lives Matter.

Meanwhile, a veritable war is going on regarding whether or not assessment (like standardized testing) is "racist," and excellence programs are being scrapped for being "inequitable." As parents react to this (often very negatively) by seeking to pull their kids out of our public schools in favor of homeschooling them, calls to abolish homeschooling are coming to the fore of the discussion from the priestly of this new faith, insisting that it is "racist" to teach one's own children at home because the state has a duty to teach them subjects like "Social Justice." These changes should facilitate the elimination of objective standards that will enable an increase in the ability to execute and hide rampant problems of applying discriminatory admissions policies at elite schools and universities, all in the name of "equity," which people are led to believe is a hallmark of group fairness.

Simultaneously, many of our government agencies and departments are taking on the tenets of Critical Social Justice, especially Critical Race Theory and its derivative, "anti-racism," as a matter of mandate. These entities include state and federal "departments of" as well as myriad government contractors and state funded entities, like National Public Radio (NPR). Even NASA, which is widely regarded as synonymous with scientific rigor, hosted "anti-racist" historian Ibram X. Kendi to lecture its employees on tenets of this Theoretical view of the world. This invitation is remarkable given that Kendi's explicit ambition is to pass an "anti-racist" Constitutional amendment that would permanently create and empower a de facto fourth branch of the American government dedicated to critically examining and unmaking any "racist" policy, defined as anything that ends up having certain (but not other) disparate outcomes by race. This invitation is even less alarming than the fact that Kendi's argument is being used in support of a California initiative to remove the anti-discrimination language from its state constitution in accordance with achieving equity and "anti-racism." Equally, if not more alarming, are that the Center for Disease Control has institutionalized tremendous quantities of this Theory (during a pandemic, no less), even while states officially declare "systemic racism" a kind of "public health crisis" that obviates any reasonable measures for pandemic mitigation if done in the name of "racial justice." Even large government contractors, like Sandia Laboratories, which handles extremely high-tech weaponry (including nuclear weaponry), have taken on this ideology deeply enough to have fallen into an internal "civil war" after a brave employee blew the whistle.

The matter of understanding Critical Social Justice, as the ideology is formally called, is, in some sense, no longer a mere philosophical issue (if it ever truly was). It's now an emergency, and as more and more people are noticing (or, it seems, hoping, as it would provide them with recourse that currently seems not to exist), it's likely to be a legal emergency. Unfortunately, very little legal architecture currently exists to do anything about the problem of this imposition of one particular belief system upon society via its most susceptible demographic—children. Further, perhaps due to failures of people like myself in the past few years, there has been very little push to generate this legal architecture in what is likely to be one of its strongest and most fruitful directions: identifying the Critical Social Justice worldview as a functionally religious worldview. This is required to open it up to the full machinery of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and its famous Establishment Clause, and would, at least, get it out of our school systems very quickly.

The argument, I think, needs to be opened up in earnest because we now face two incredible perils against the American ideal where it collides with the Critical Social Justice worldview, and these merit taking the issue and the risk that comes with it (legally protecting Critical Social Justice as a system of faith) very seriously. The first of these is the one I've already spent some time on pointing out: Critical Social Justice has already encroached deeply into our public education system and halls of government in the United States. In fact, this trend is accelerating to a pitch so extreme that complaints that schools are operating in the service of political indoctrination rather than as houses of a basic and liberal education, as they were initially conceived, are rapidly becoming plausible. The second is that a time may come in the not-distant future in which this totalizing and totalitarian worldview could be installed as the de facto state religion, even while it elides categorization as such. The state endorsement—or worse, enforcement—of any faith falls directly afoul of the protections the U.S. Constitution was written to ensure to individual citizens, and, in fact, to other systems of faith that would disagree with it. The question is, which totalizing worldviews that are not traditionally recognizable as faiths should be treated in the same way for the same reasons? While the answer to this question is not immediately clear, it must have to do with how they function in society and in the lives of those who believe them.

Therefore, to put it directly: It is my belief that the contents of the Critical Social Justice worldview should be protected as matters of private conscience only, and they should also be limited as such. That is, I want to contend that the Free-exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment apply to Critical Social Justice. It is therefore not merely a philosophical exercise to ask whether or not Critical Social Justice constitutes a religion but also a serious legal one that gets to the very core of what the American Experiment has always been about—freedom of belief and from state religion. It is my intention here to make this case as briefly as possible, which means it will still be very long.

Part I – The Philosophical Argument

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In Summary

I think this does a thorough job of summarizing the case that Critical Social Justice, as an ideological worldview, is very similar to religion in most of the relevant ways. It forms a moral community that is designed to meet the same psychosocial needs as religions are, though it is decentralized and disorganized (I have previously called it "disorganized religion," though "decentralized" might be nearer the mark). It provides a mythology, metaphysics, and moral law that binds the community and enables "divinity"-based psychosocial valuation of adherents and others, and this gives rise to clear "critical" duties of conscience in everyone the system can touch. It ontologically grounds its moral commandments against the long view from the End of History, as a kind of legacy-based moral lawgiver and adjudicator. It possesses its own epistemological framework as well—one rooted in the critical mythology of problematization and postmodern mythology of lived experience and discursive production. Since it proceeds from a mythology with its own creation myth, metaphysics, and moral law, this view is totalizing to those who adhere to it, as is typical of religious belief. This system of belief is, in fact, constructed along the same lines as how Augustine organized Christianity and Aquinas "proved" the existence of God. Finally, it gives way to fundamentalism of both types and manifests in puritanical form, which is something that, while it is not limited to religion, is very common within sects or cults that arise within religious movements and worldviews.

Part II: The Legal Argument

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A Functional Definition of Religion

At this point, at last, we can turn to Clements' functional definition of religion, and I think enough argument has been made so far that little or no elaboration afterward will be required to convince the reader that it is either met or very plausibly grounds for serious discussion about whether it is met. Clements gives the following definition (emphasis added):

Supplementing Judge Adams' idea of a comprehensive belief system that addresses fundamental questions with the notion of duties of conscience provides a workable definition of religion for purposes of the First Amendment. Taking these two ideas together, religion can be defined as a comprehensive belief system that addresses the fundamental questions of human existence, such as the meaning of life and death, man's role in the universe, and the nature of good and evil, and that gives rise to duties of conscience.

I am, given my background in mathematics and all I've written so far, tempted here to type only "quod erat demonstrandum." Clements, however, is more prudentially circumspect than that and offers a number of potential objections to his definition, some of which might bear relevance. The Objection for Marxism, discussed above, is one such argument. The one below, which in the case of Critical Social Justice I might call the Objection to Nihilism, remains:

Moreover, the proposed approach does require that the alleged religious belief play a certain role in the claimant's life: it must be part of a comprehensive belief system that addresses certain fundamental questions and gives rise to duties of conscience. Thus, the issue in a free exercise case is not simply whether the claimant sincerely believes that the belief or practice in question is a religious belief, but whether he sincerely believes that it plays the religious role in his life. The definition of that role provides a basis for the factfinder to question the nature of the belief, and to assess the claimant's sincerity, thereby reducing the likelihood of successful fraudulent claims.

It is clear that some faiths look upward to God while retaining awareness of sin, temptation, and evil, and their faithful tend to be enriched by this habit. Other faiths—particularly, puritanical ones—tend not to do this and look downward at sin that needs to be called out, temptation that must be avoided or repressed, and evil that must be destroyed. Their awareness of their God is remote and distant, a secondary feature of their faith, and they tend to see their God as a stern judge who will, in the end, adjudicate on the moral worth of their struggle against the evils of the world. Critical Social Justice is such a downward-oriented faith. The Eye at the End of History will know, as will the future generations between now and then, whether they stood for liberation or oppression. In this sense, while postmodernism might have been nihilistic, Critical Social Justice has taken up only traces of this blind negativity (particularly the blindness). For them, it is not that everything must be destroyed, just everything that maintains systemic oppression.

But Can It Be Believed?

This extraordinarily nonsensical set of beliefs about the world and willing embrace of self-serving double standards produces perhaps the most common difficulty I encounter when trying to tell people about Critical Social Justice: people really do believe it. It should be sufficiently clear to people, as families are literally being torn apart as a result of falling on different sides of the relevant issues, but perhaps more argument than this is needed.

The difficulty arises because to an outsider, the Theory of Critical Social Justice is simply unbelievable, if not blatantly self-contradictory, flatly ridiculous, and transparently unethical. It isn't clear how anyone could truly believe ideas like that there is no truth, only your "truth" and mine (communicated, no less, by smartphones equipped with GPS). Given the cartoonish conflict theory it inherited from late-stage, Marcusian neo-Marxism, which was made even more cartoonish by the identity-politicians who took it up in earnest (including black feminists like Angela Davis, radicals like the Weatherman Underground, and other Liberationist revolutionaries within the so-called New Left that emerged after One-Dimensional Man and the Vietnam War) and the ridiculous and unsustainable postmodernist break from truth, doubts the sincerity of Critical Social Justice advocates seem always at the heart of liberal and conservative reactions to descriptions of the worldview. Yeah, but does anybody really believe that?

I think the answer to this question, though, is undoubtedly in the affirmative—sincerity of belief and conviction to the faith are undeniably real—and the theologians of the movement, at the least, tell us this in the clearest possible terms. To them, objectivity is, as Robin DiAngelo has put it, "undesirable" and "an impossible goal." Thus, truth, in the objective sense that it could be shared as true by all people in all places and times regardless of their cultural milieu, does not exist (or is, at least, entirely inaccessible). Our comprehension of reality is wholly and radically subjectivist, so that reality becomes "realities," which are not comprehensible on shared terms but lived and interpreted through cultural paradigms that either align with systemic dominance or the attempt to liberate people from dominance.

This leads Critical Social Justice scholars (theologians) to compose and compile lists of tenets, which, in articulating just the "systemic racism" aspect of this belief system (while other dimensions of Theory admit other, parallel expressions), read like this example from DiAngelo, et al. One will notice that they form something of a creed (oppi, usko, uskontunnustus):

Racism exists today in both traditional and modern forms. Racism is an institutionalized, multilayered, multilevel system that distributes unequal power and resources between white people and people of color, as socially identified, and disproportionately benefits whites. All members of society are socialized to participate in the system of racism, albeit in varied social locations. All white people benefit from racism regardless of intentions. No one chose to be socialized into racism so no one is bad, but no one is neutral. To not act against racism is to support racism. Racism must be continually identified, analyzed and challenged. No one is ever done. The question is not "Did racism take place?" but rather "How did racism manifest in that situation?" The racial status quo is comfortable for most whites. Therefore, anything that maintains white comfort is suspect. The racially oppressed have a more intimate insight via experiential knowledge into the system of race than their racial oppressors. However, white professors will be seen as having more legitimacy, thus positionality must be intentionally engaged. Resistance is a predictable reaction to anti-racist education and must be explicitly and strategically addressed.

These are the core tenets developed by scholar-activists Heather Bruce, Robin DiAngelo, Gyda Swaney (Salish) and Amie Thurber at the National Race and Pedagogy Conference at Puget Sound University. They went on to be implemented explicitly at The Evergreen State College, presaging its descent into riotous madness in a way that bears every indication of having been implemented by true believers convinced not only of the capital-T Truth of these propositions but of their righteousness. In light of reading this creed and seeing its real-world implementation, perhaps first at Evergreen and now throughout our society, the question of whether this is, in fact, a religious creed becomes pressing. This lends considerable weight to the question of whether or not Critical Social Justice is a religion, not just by philosophical argument by also by legal argument. My case in this essay is that according to a functional legal argument with significant Supreme Court precedent, the answer to that question is yes. It is a credal faith exhibiting clear liturgical forms and epistolic writings that proceeds upon a recognizable Augustinian construct that it has cobbled together from various features of the Western canon, including progressive aspects of faith, the moral but not practical cores of liberal thought, anti-liberal Critical Theory, and anti-everything postmodernism.


Conclusion: What Now?

Given the situation we find ourselves in, in society today, this matter demands serious debate. If this argument is correct, Critical Social Justice must be protected under the Free-exercise Clause of the First Amendment, so that any who wish to hold this religious view for themselves as a matter of personal conscience must be protected in doing so. That is their fundamental right, and it shall not be infringed. In the same turn, the rest of us have fundamental rights to our own consciences as well, and Critical Social Justice has no standing upon which it can infringe upon them, or us. The Establishment Clause should remove Critical Social Justice from our schools, our administrative state, and the halls of our government, as this faith, like any other, cannot receive state endorsement or become a state religion.

The secularist principle of our free, pluralistic society should also unbind the consciences of any individuals who, understanding Critical Social Justice as the system of faith that it is, have other conscience, morals, and mind, so that they might reject its imposition as inappropriate and unduly intrusive. Just as those who wish to hold to a faith of Critical Social Justice with its transcendent systems of power and its spiritualism of liberation from them are free to do so, the rest of us are free to say no and to believe otherwise. We should feel as confident in this as we would in rejecting the impositions of any other faith we don't believe in.

In closing, the question that needs answering is whether or not Critical Social Justice meets these criteria: "a comprehensive belief system that addresses the fundamental questions of human existence, such as the meaning of life and death, man's role in the universe, and the nature of good and evil, and that gives rise to duties of conscience." I contend that it very well may. If that is the case, it must not be given special status by our American government and must be stripped from public spaces, including our federal, state, and local governments and, especially, our public schools, in none of which it belongs. Wokeness is a matter of personal conscience, and it must be protected as such, just as we must be protected from state enforcement of it.

QuoteLucasfilm Folds To the Twitter Mob and Fires Gina Carano

(...)

Before her acting career, Carano made a name for herself as an MMA fighter. You have to be a badass to be a successful female MMA fighter, so it makes sense that Carano plays a badass character in The Mandalorian. She began her acting career during her MMA career, but it didn't really kick off until her retirement. Although she has been in blockbuster films like Deadpool, she's most well known for her role as the mercenary Cara Dune on The Mandalorian.

The fan backlash against Carano began over the summer after she was silent about the Black Lives Matter movement. Fans began to pressure Carano into speaking up (and some were bullying her by calling her a racist for not being vocal).

She responded by writing, "In my experience, screaming at someone that they are a racist when they are indeed NOT a racist & any post and/or research you do will show you those exact facts, then I'm sorry, these people are not 'educators.' They are cowards and bullies."

She came under fire again in September for not putting her pronouns in her Twitter bio. She responded to the criticism by joking that her preferred pronouns were "boop/bop/beep."

(...)

The first calls for her firing started in mid-November, when Carano tweeted a meme questioning why Democratic politicians want their constituents to wear masks. This led fans to call for her firing from The Mandalorian on Twitter.

(...)

On Wednesday, #FireGinaCarano began trending again on Twitter after the actress shared a post stating the American political climate resembles Nazi Germany. Her post was deleted but screenshots circled on social media, along with renewed calls from the outraged Twitter mob that Disney and Lucasfilm fire her from The Mandalorian. 

(...)

QuoteThe Mandalorian And Wonder Woman Actor Pedro Pascal Compares Donald Trump Voters To Nazis

(...)

The meme reads "Losers in 1865" next to the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia.

It then reads, "Losers in 1945" next to the flag of Nazi Germany, officially called the flag of the German Reich.

Finally it reads, "Losers in 2020" next to a Make America Great Again hat.

(...)

Quote"I'm not a Republican actress -- I'm actually a toxic, abusive, gaslighting director of many popular shows and films over the years," Carano said. (...)

Disney's response was immediate, as the company profusely apologized and hired her back.

"We are so sorry to Ms. Carano for firing her -- we did not realize she was actually a sexually abusive male director trapped in a woman's body," said a Disney spokesperson. (...)

Quote from: zupi on 11.02.2021, 13:48:20

Ja kenkää siis tuli. Kuten alla olevan twiitin kuvasta selviää, mitään antisemitististä Carano ei postannut, vaan vertasi nykyisiä vihavasureita natseihin. Taisi osua arkaan paikkaan...

Quote
On Wednesday, #FireGinaCarano began trending again on Twitter after the actress shared a post stating the American political climate resembles Nazi Germany. Her post was deleted but screenshots circled on social media, along with renewed calls from the outraged Twitter mob that Disney and Lucasfilm fire her from The Mandalorian. 

QuoteOne of the most serious threats to free speech is the silencing of criticism of the government of Israel.

I have now found this out the hard way, having just been fired as a Guardian columnist for sending a tweet about US military aid to Israel

QuoteSCOOP: A Philadelphia elementary school forced fifth-grade students to celebrate "black communism" and simulate a Black Power rally to "free Angela Davis" from prison.

I've obtained exclusive whistleblower documents and photographs from the school. Here's the story.

QuoteLast year, a fifth-grade teacher at the William D. Kelley School designed a social-studies curriculum to celebrate the political radical Angela Davis, praising the "black communist" for her fight against "inequality" and telling students to "define communist" in favorable terms.

QuoteAt the end of the unit, the teacher led the ten- and eleven-year-olds into the school auditorium to "simulate" a Black Power rally to "free Angela Davis" from prison, where she had once been held on charges of murder. The students chanted "Black Power!" and "Free Angela!"

QuoteThe William D. Kelley School's student population is 94 percent black and 100 percent "economically disadvantaged." Academically, it is one of the worst-performing schools in the state: by graduation, only 13 percent of Kelley students will have achieved basic literacy.

QuoteDespite this abysmal academic performance, administrators have gradually abandoned traditional pedagogy in favor of political radicalism. They recently commissioned murals of Angela Davis and Huey P. Newton, who represent the Communist and Black Panther revolutionary movements.

QuoteIn recent years, the entire Philadelphia public school system has embraced the philosophy of "antiracism." Last summer, the superintendent released an Antiracism Declaration promising to "[dismantle] systems of racial inequity" and implemented racially-segregated programs.

QuoteThe local teachers' union produced a video denouncing the United States as a "settler colony built on white supremacy and capitalism," which has created a "system that lifts up white people over everyone else."

QuoteThe teachers' union openly demands that the United States overthrow the "racist structure of capitalism," provide "reparations for Black and Indigenous people," and "uproot white supremacy and plant the seeds for a new world."

QuoteThe gap between rhetoric and reality is almost beyond comprehension: the ten-year-olds marching for "black communism" can barely read and write. Rather than come to terms with this failure, educators have shifted the blame to "systemic racism" and promises of "revolution."

QuoteThis should be a crime. The School District of Philadelphia has 18,000 employees and a $3.4 billion annual budget—and fails, year after year, to teach basic literacy. Educators promise to "plant the seeds for a new world," but condemn their students to illiteracy and failure.

QuoteIn her recent book The Lives and Deaths of Shelter Animals, Katja Guenther claims that dogs are being killed because of "capitalism, anthroparchy, white supremacy and patriarchy." She argues that allowing dogs to sleep inside is a privilege reserved for the white and wealthy and that policies against keeping dogs chained up in backyards are intended to oppress people of color by imposing "middle-class norms of animal keeping in which companion animals are considered family and treated accordingly," which ignore the fact that people of color "are themselves trapped in poverty, may have few options for legitimate income generation and possibly rely on their dogs for ... status."

Unfortunately Guenther's misguided book is gaining traction. Shelter director Kristen Hassen opines that Guenther "gets it right" in concluding that "racism, classism and the caste system are at the heart of the broken animal sheltering institution." Arguing that laws to prevent mistreatment of dogs discriminate against "anyone in the US other than white, middle class and upper-class individuals," Sloane Hawes, Tess Hupe and Kevin Morris of the University of Denver Institute for Human-Animal Connection cite the book in their proposal to relax enforcement of animal protection laws—a proposal that threatens to reverse decades of hard-won progress.

QuoteIn Guenther's book, moreover, white people do things; people of color have things done to them. For example, people of color who abandon their dogs in empty apartments are victims "ensnared in the legal system," forced to leave their animals behind "under the duress of sudden eviction or deportation or arrest." Guenther even claims that such people actually believe that what they are doing is for the best, because of "the constraints of their knowledge and resources, both of which are limited by the nexus of their class, status as immigrants, and ethnicity."

When a Latino man on a bicycle drops a dog "while escaping from mall security officers ... after stealing a pair of Wrangler jeans," she explains this away as the result of his "status as marginalized." When a woman leaves her dog to die at the pound after she has finished breeding her and selling her puppies to buy drugs, it is the fault of her "status as a poorly educated queer woman of color." Guenther laments that "rescuers ... critique urban Black and Latinx communities for not seeing companion animals as sufficiently part of the family and instead seeing them as resources, whether protective (as in guarding) or financial (as in breeding or possibly fighting)."

She appears to be arguing that if a person of color can turn a profit or build a reputation through animal exploitation that excuses animal suffering—even in the case of sadistic animal abuse: "From a class perspective, wealthy people are believed to be too 'civilized' to engage in barbaric activities like dogfighting, and it's no coincidence that the only affluent person who has been publicly shamed for dogfighting in the U.S., Michael Vick, is Black, newly wealthy after growing up in poverty."

Dogfighting, however, is not considered barbaric because it violates the norms of wealthy people—who, after all, have historically had their own versions of animal cruelty masquerading as entertainment, such as fox hunting and pigeon shooting. Nor is dogfighting considered uncivilized because of the skin color of the organizers—many of whom are white—but because of what it does to dogs.

QuoteWhile Guenther explains away mistreatment if the perpetrator happens to be a person of color, she has plenty of harsh words for those trying to save animals. Day in and day out, rescuers and volunteers show tremendous courage and compassion when they visit their local pounds. At many high kill shelters, they face hostile treatment from staff and endure heartbreak at seeing animals destined for lethal injection or gas chambers. And yet they go back, again and again.

Despite acknowledging these traumas, because most of the volunteers Guenther encountered were white, she accuses them of working to "reinscribe hierarchies of power and status within the shelter" against the non-white workers and thus "maintain existing social inequalities between humans even as they seek to help animals." When a rescuer laments the condition of a dog "with sagging belly skin, elongated nipples, and enlarged genitalia" and expresses dismay that the former owners "confined their dog outdoors" and "used the pit bull primarily for income generation through breeding," Guenther dismisses the criticism as "the animal practices of white rescuers."

QuoteThe most dangerous thing about Guenther's book, however, is her view that human-animal relations are "a zero-sum political struggle involving identity markers like race." In the early nineteenth century, cruelty to dogs was not recognized in law because they were considered property. Likewise, harming a homeless dog was not illegal because there was no property interest at stake. The animal did not matter. Guenther is once again suggesting a standard that excuses harm based on the interests of those causing it.

QuoteKatja M. Guenther is Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of California, Riverside, and author of Making Their Place (Stanford, 2010).

Quote from: zupi on 12.02.2021, 12:57:52
https://newspunch.com/being-kind-to-dogs-is-racist-university-professor-says/ (https://newspunch.com/being-kind-to-dogs-is-racist-university-professor-says/)

Quote from: Lalli IsoTalo on 12.02.2021, 22:32:33

Quote from: zupi on 12.02.2021, 12:57:52
https://newspunch.com/being-kind-to-dogs-is-racist-university-professor-says/ (https://newspunch.com/being-kind-to-dogs-is-racist-university-professor-says/)

Everything Is Racism Except Critical Social Justice.

QuoteReturn of the Strong Gods: Understanding the New Right

(...)

What is most striking about Atkins's comments is not his evident belief that 75 million Americans are conspiracy theorists, nor his suggestion that we re-educate citizens for wrongthink—in the world of Left-Twitter, this is comparatively mild fare—but rather his insistence that the Democratic party is a uniquely heterodox space, a forum for robust policy debates, while the GOP is some kind of monolith. A "cult," as he called it. And yet, the Republican Party possesses more viewpoint diversity and is more internally factional than its competitor by a wide margin. Of all the exhausted canards one hears from liberals and never-Trumpers alike, the one that most needs retirement is the notion that Trump bent conservatism to his will, or, as Tim Alberta put it in 2017, "The conservative movement is Donald Trump."

Trump's election in 2016 was not the reflection of a unified coalition, but a deeply divided one. A great many Americans held their noses to vote for Trump, whom they saw as the lesser evil. Atkins's caricature of half the country is the sort of monocausal explanation that declines to take seriously the real forces that led to Trump's rise: the economic dislocation brought about by automation and globalization; the collapse of the manufacturing sector; dueling opioid and suicide epidemics; a three-year consecutive decline in the life-expectancy rate; a crisis of loneliness and despair brought about by family collapse, institutional decay, and declining social capital; a student-debt crisis that has crippled young people's futures; the corruption of our media and sense-making institutions; and a growing disconnect between our politically correct, chthonic governing elites and the concerns of ordinary Americans, which include such untouchable issues as immigration, the warfare state, and corporate bailouts. As Tucker Carlson puts it in his book Ship of Fools: "Happy countries don't elect Donald Trump... desperate ones do."

There is a growing intellectual movement on the Right (I call them the "New Right," though they have also been called the "illiberal Right" and even "America's Orbánists") that understands this, even while acknowledging Trump's many flaws. For some in this cadre, Trump is not unlike Hegel's "world historical figure," a leader who embodies the zeitgeist, if only for a moment, and carries forward the ruthless march of Kant's "World Spirit," discarding stale orthodoxies and outdated structures along the way. For others, Trump was merely a bull in a china shop who shattered the postwar consensus, brittle as it was, and summoned in its place a return of the "strong gods" (to borrow Rusty Reno's phrase) of loyalty, solidarity, and home. The oracles of these strong gods are an impressively credentialed cast of scholars and writers; they include Notre Dame professor Patrick Deneen, former Trump advisor Michael Anton, New York Post opinion editor Sohrab Ahmari, Israeli political scientist Yoram Hazony, and Harvard Law professor Adrian Vermeule.

The New Right is not a monolithic entity, nor does it follow a set of prescribed tenets. It is, what George F. Will (of all people) might call, a "sensibility." Certainly, there are uniting threads of nationalism, populism, protectionism, and traditionalism at play; yet what distinguishes the New Right more than anything is its counter-revolutionary spirit, its politics of opposition. "In this progressive theocracy in which all must worship at the altar of Wokeness," writes Hillsdale professor David Azerrad, "conservatism, if one can still even call it that, is more about overthrowing than conserving." If Atkins is right about anything, it is this: With Trump at the helm, conservatism has become less an ideology than a battle cry. Where the old guard stood athwart history yelling "Stop!" the new guard screams, in a pitch closer to that of Rousseau than Burke, "Tear it all down!" "This new Right," says Azerrad, "has a decidedly unconservative temperament."

(...)

Deneen spoke passionately of the need for a strong middle class and of the various civic and national security reasons for retaining a robust manufacturing sector, citing the pandemic and our inability to produce the necessary personal protective equipment. For Hillsdale College professor David Azerrad, the question of economy also comes with significant cultural ramifications. "The issue is," said Azerrad when we spoke, "do we have an economy that is producing well-paying jobs that allow men without degrees to find dignified employment so they can get married and raise a family? The issue is less location than the bifurcation of the economy into menial service jobs and abstract thinking jobs. That's the issue," he told me: "the fact that manly men are viewed as a problem and made to feel less and less at home in the American economy and society." When I brought up Kevin Williamson's point, Azerrad responded, "There has to be a backbone of the country that will work with its hands. If it means moving a few towns, that's fine. But you can't move to Mexico."

Azerrad looked pained when I asked him to give his brand of conservatism a label. "I don't know that I'm comfortable—I mean, if I had to give myself a label, I would say I am part of the New Right that is dissatisfied with the platitudes of what Rusty Reno has called 'the rotting flesh of Reaganism.' I want a Right that is anchored in the realities of the 21st century, that understands its base, that is aggressively fighting the culture wars, that is not beholden to the neocons on foreign policy or to the libertarians on economic thinking." At one point in our conversation, he shared a line from one of his friends, whom he declined to name: "The Republicans should be the party of men who like being men, women who like being women, and Americans who like being Americans." He flashed a boyish grin.

(...)

For all that, attacking the New Right through Orbán, while rhetorically effective, offers a distorting lens at best. My conversation with Deneen made it clear that for traditionalist conservatives the allure of Orbán's approach runs deeper than politics and boils down to the question of what the telos (purpose or function) of a society should be. "It's a concept of society," Deneen told me, "that is pre-liberal, that has at its basis the fundamental society, the family." Whereas liberalism sees the individual as the fundamental organizing unit of society, traditional conservatism begins with the family. The family, after all, shapes and gives rise to the individual. I cut in: "So instead of stripping society down to atomized individuals in a 'state of nature' and then building up Lockean rights," I asked Deneen clumsily, "you're starting with the family, and then society grows out of that?"

"That's exactly right," Deneen told me. "It's conceptually and anthropologically different from liberal assumptions. If you begin by building from that point and you think about the ways that those institutions are under threat from a variety of sources in modern society... to the extent that you can strengthen those institutions, you do the things that someone like David French wants, which is to track a lot of the attention away from the role of central government. One of the reasons liberalism has failed in the thing it claims to do—which is limiting central government—is precisely because it is so fundamentally individualistic that radically individuated selves end up needing and turning to central governments for support and assistance."

According to Deneen, liberal orders seek to liberate individuals from the "despotism" of custom, place, and tradition, reducing culture to a sterile consumerism, allowing us to "sample from other cultures but not be of a culture." This "anti-culture," as he calls it, is at the heart of the liberal project, whose aim is to "free us" from the traditional associations and commitments that would bind us, limit us, and define us. Liberalism, then, is a fundamentally homogenizing force. By compelling us to affirm all cultures, it deprives us of our culture. By taking us everywhere, it leaves us nowhere. By urging us not to conform, it renders us formless. This formlessness is a hallmark of the liberal anti-culture. "In the same way that we have bankrupted the next generation by leaving them negative balances in their bank accounts, we've given them negative balances in their cultural coffers," Deneen said.

In his recent book Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West, Rusty Reno expands on this critique. His central thesis is that, since 1945, Western culture has been one of "anti-imperatives"—anti-fascism, anti-totalitarian, anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, and anti-racism. These are what the author calls "weak gods." (...)

But citizens, Reno argues, will not tolerate a society of "pure negation" for long. The strong gods always return. Public life requires a shared mythos and a higher vision of the common good—what Richard Weaver called a "metaphysical dream." Human beings long to coalesce around shared loves and loyalties. We unite in solidarity to elevate the sacred. "Our social consensus," Reno writes, "always reaches for transcendent legitimacy." There must be a center of things. Without that integrating ideal, without that centripetal force, societies begin to disperse, spiraling ever outward in a "widening gyre" until the culture lies in fragments. "There can be no society," wrote the French sociologist Émile Durkheim, "which does not feel the need of upholding and reaffirming at regular intervals the collective sentiments and ideas which make its unity and personality."

The strong gods, in other words, will always be with us. The only question is, what form will we allow them to take? And how will we prevent them from overpowering us once we summon them?

(...)

QuoteI've said it before, and I'll say it again, intersectionality was a tool to get as many people as possible to think of themselves as victims so they'd carry water for the ideology at the heart of Wokeness: queer black feminism, which derives from Critical Theory and adopted PoMo.

QuoteQueer black feminism is unapologetically invested in "identity politics" in the 1977 Combahee River Collective (not Civil Rights Movement) sense, which disfavors universal humanity and places divisive rhetoric and identity (and victimhood in that identity) first. Bad ideas.

QuoteThe rise in anti-Asian discrimination and violence and some Anti-Semitism we see right now is a direct result of the intersectionality con game. "Minoritized groups" that don't do the radical politics to demand get called "anti-Black" and targeted. Racism and division rise.

QuoteWokeness is about leveraging identity, like race, sex, gender, sexuality, etc., to force "minoritized groups" to take up the narrow, divisive, regressive, damaging identity politics of radical queer black feminists in the late "liberation" school vein (Critical Theory). Or else.

QuoteIt's like a tower of useful idiots.

    Very Smart People and Wokish sympathizers are useful idiots for the Woke.

    The Woke are useful idiots and vanguards for the "stakeholder capitalism" supranational fascists.

    Those tools are useful idiots for the CCP.
    — James Lindsay, increasingly relevant (@ConceptualJames) February 16, 2021

QuoteThe Complex Relationship between Marxism and Wokeness

(...)

People who observe that Marxism is somehow tied into all of this Woke stuff, then, are certainly not wrong, but it just as certainly isn't Marxism. Marxists, like the real thing, might be behind this whole "Social Justice" phenomenon, or ready to come in after it tears society apart, as it does, but the Woke themselves are not Marxists, proper, and neither are the Marxists Woke. The simplest way to put this would be the following:

Critical Theory is "neo-Marxism," or, as it's sometimes phrased, "Cultural Marxism," which plainly derives from Marxism and retained much of what was core to its thought while completely modifying other aspects of it in the hopes of achieving communism.

Postmodernism is a particular form of "post-Marxism," which had given up more or less entirely on Marxism and thus everything else, though it was still a fairly significant fan of communist efforts as they played out in the 1950s and 1960s, and it was no friend to liberalism.

Critical Social Justice is the intentional fusion of these two schools of thought with the goal of achieving its ideas about "Social Justice" through radical identity politics.

None of this is simple, though, unfortunately, and so it all requires more elaboration. A quick history might therefore be in order. The relevant object to understand, though we don't develop this specifically in Cynical Theories, is Marx's "conflict theory," which he derived from Hegel's master/slave dialectic.

(...)

As for the neo-Marxists, they understood that Marx was wrong to say that economics were the relevant object upstream of politics. They realized it is culture and thus the impacts culture has on individual psychologies that is upstream of politics. (Andrew Breitbart didn't come up with this idea; he read it from the Critical Theorists before deciding that they were right and putting it into his own applications!) Critical Theory, then, arose as an application of conflict theory to ideology and culture, as analyzed partly through (psychoanalytic) psychology and the emerging field of sociology. They blamed Marxism for failing to understand people and society just as much as they blamed liberalism for producing a means by which people could see society as essentially fair and success as essentially the result of talent and effort.

So, neo-Marxism is Marxian but not Marxist, in that it continues the conflict theory-style analysis of Marx into a different realm and does so toward essentially Marxist ends. One could say this is a distinction without a difference, but that is incorrect. The consequence of this shift is profound. It means that rather than attempting to unite workers and seize the means of economic production, as the Marxists had envisioned, the neo-Marxists wanted to change culture itself. This led them to find multiple sites of the oppressor/oppressed dynamic in society and get inside peoples heads with it, which they derived from the intentional forced marriage of Freudian psychoanalysis into Marxian social theory. They led them to understood the importance of seizing the means of cultural production—education, media, arts, journalism, faith, and entertainment—though, in many respects, they weren't particularly good at it. For that, they would need the postmodernists and the critical pedagogists, as we shall see.

Of course, this is an oversimplification rather in the extreme. (...)

(...) This postmodern pessimism was more or less universal, though, and extended to Marxism as well as to capitalism, liberalism, and everything else, all of which Jean-François Lyotard named as "metanarratives" to be radically skeptical of. It is in this sense that postmodernism is actually more post-Marxist than it is anything else.

So, that sets the history of both the neo-Marxist and postmodernist (post-Marxist) schools of thought and explains their connection to Marxism, including what they kept from Marx and what they rejected. The Marxian roots are obvious, and yet it isn't Marxism, and this antagonistic relationship between the theoretical approaches goes in both directions.

(...)

Nevertheless, both of these traditions had major problems, as one would expect from even hearing a superficial description of their ideas, and both of them more or less burned themselves out in public popularity pretty quickly. The French postmodern Theory was rejected completely in France and more or less ignored everywhere else (...)  and was wrongly declared dead by the academy as a serious intellectual pursuit by sometime in the 1990s.

Neo-Marxism, on the other hand, turned radical and violent under Herbert Marcuse, who even claimed himself that it had gone beyond his vision, and it burned itself out in terms of public support. (His influence, combined with that of the French postcolonialist  and psychoanalyst Frantz Fanon,  is, to decent approximation on its own the origin story of the radical anarchist project called Antifa.) Critical Theory then went underground into the universities, in that whole long march through the institutions project, starting in the early 1970s, working its way first into feminist and then other forms of critique, mostly in English departments, under headings like women's studies, gender studies, African American studies, and ethnic studies.

Thus, again, it's our avant-garde humanities scholars who remained interested in this at the time, mostly feminists (...) More or less everyone else ignored it even as they believed themselves more and more crucially relevant within the academy, with one horrible exception, to our peril, until quite recently.

The one notable exception is the schools of education, particularly following the "critical turn in education,"  which sought to make education about "consciousness raising" and instilling a "critical consciousness" into children as an educational priority. Some of this was explicitly anti-capitalist, and thus Marxist in origin, but it was mostly much more subtle. Critical pedagogy, as the result came to be called, was much more interested in undermining the national metanarratives, if you will, and getting students to be "educated" in a way that would lead them to be critical of their own national histories,  culture, and civics—or, more explicitly, to get them to learn to see their home nations as oppressive bad actors rather than as imperfect leaders of spreading a liberal order throughout the world and thus come to doubt or even hate them.

(...)

Freire, I'm told, ruined Brazilian education more or less singlehandedly, and it was his approach that Henry Giroux found so inspiring that he dragged it and its influence into North America. Giroux then incorporated first neo-Marxist and then postmodernist ideas ("the European theorists") into education and educational theory, though the latter of those projects happened much more extensively later under the hand of another critical pedagogist named Joe Kincheloe. Thus, our schools of education turned heavily in the "critical" direction (meaning a blurry mix of Marxism, neo-Marxism, and postmodern post-Marxism, plus Freire's own slightly tangential post-Marxist ideas) by the early 1980s, when Giroux became massively influential after publishing his first book, Ideology, Culture, and the Process of Schooling,  which was first published in North America in 1981.

Quote"An informed patriotism is what we want. And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world? Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America. We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American. And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions.

(...)

"But now, we're about to enter the '90s, and some things have changed. Younger parents aren't sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children. And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style. Our spirit is back, but we haven't reinstitutionalized it. We've got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom – freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise. And freedom is special and rare. It's fragile; it needs [protection].

QuoteA lot was going on in the 1980s and into the 1990s in this regard. By then, the (liberationlist, i.e., neo-Marxist) black feminists (this is a school of thought, not black people who happen to be feminists) had taken up quite a bit of interest in postmodern Theory, as had some other fairly radical feminists, especially those like Gayle Rubin, Judith Butler, and Eve Sedgwick, who would go on to lay the foundations of queer Theory. (...)

This generation of activists saw postmodern Theory as somewhat incorrect but intrinsically useful for deconstructing the power dynamics their underlying neo-Marxist and radical feminist worldviews believed dominated society. (...)

The big idea these particular Theorists had was to limit the deconstructive potential of postmodern Theory so that it couldn't be applied to any identity factor that's on the "oppressed" end of the neo-Marxist liberationist view. They outlined the idea that to deconstruct a site of oppression, as it is understood through lived experience, is itself a luxury, thus application, of oppressive privilege. That removed systemic oppression, as the liberationists (neo-Marxists) defined it, from the acid bath of postmodernist deconstruction.

That is, a moral rock—the imperative to liberate from oppression—was inserted into the philosophical universe touched upon by these varied Marxian lines of scholarship, thought, and activism. That reification of systemic oppression, as understood through its lived experience (the one thing the deconstructionists said would be left when everything else is deconstructed), created a neat package by which postmodern Theory could be simplified and packaged up for activists.

(...)

Thus, "liberationist" politics were even by then, and much more by the time in 1989–1991 when postmodernism was fully and formally incorporated into them, unapologetically centered upon a narrowly particular and aggressive approach to identity politics that sought to forward social responsibility at the level of identity groups as the answer to the question of systemic oppression. The postmodern view that knowledge is just another application of unjustly empowered politics effectively liberated neo-Marxism from any obligation to making true statements about the world in service of its liberationist agenda. Instead, it elevated for these rather cutthroat activists the power of both unfalsifiable claims to lived experience (of systemic oppression) and the problematizing (i.e., offense-taking) that the Critical Theorists had forwarded as a means beyond defeasibility and falsification for invalidating undesirable (note: not "incorrect") statements about the world and social reality within it (these, of course, would be those that are "not liberationist," in the sense of producing a communist, or ethno-communist, revolution).

(...)

This very radical approach as it appeared in the 1990s makes the Black Power movement from the 1960s and 1970s look quaint by comparison. It ultimately carried the goal of earning liberation for those who endure systemic oppression, not just from their oppressors but from oppression itself by seeking a complete overthrow of the existing system, in part through a complete deconstruction of anything that confers, produces, legitimizes, or upholds systemic power in any regard whatsoever. Whiteness itself, in all of its various manifestations, for example, must be unmade to end systemic racism, it contends. Here, then, is where postmodernism (post-Marxism) and neo-Marxism fused into "Critical Social Justice," and this fusion can be read quite explicitly in Kimberlé Crenshaw's landmark 1991 paper, "Mapping the Margins".

That was the official birth of the Critical Social Justice school of thought (...)

So, in that sense, the Critical Social Justice that we describe in Cynical Theories (under the moniker "Social Justice scholarship and activism") is profoundly Marxian in more than one way at once but is very expressly not Marxist. In particular, Marxism is an economics-based social theory, and Critical Social Justice actually usurps economic analysis and obscures it to use it as a proxy for its peculiar approach to identity politics. To be more specific on that, for example, it's overwhelmingly obvious that economic causes are the sources of many of the phenomena Critical Race Theorists name as "systemic racism," but they use the fact that there are statistical economic differences by race to claim that racism (not capitalistic exploitation) are the ultimate causes of those differences. Thus, they make class a proxy for the site of oppression that they're actually obsessively focused upon, race, and thereby obliterate any possibility for liberal, rational, or even materialist or Marxist analysis of the underlying issues.

There's something of an exception to that point, however, as though this isn't already complicated enough. As Critical Social Justice not particularly suited to do much of anything except tear things apart and seems positively disinterested in building anything at all, the truly Marxist underpinnings of the movement do tend to show through a bit when its activists try to do anything practical in the sense of building something. We see this, for example, in demands for equitable and diverse hiring, as those ideas are quite obviously related to Marxism but only as filtered through identity-based lenses, which Marxism would reject on principle (not for bad reasons). In this way, it's probably more accurate to describe the efforts of Critical Social Justice not as Marxist but as ethno-communist, where "ethnicity" here applies to the "culture" of any particular "systemically oppressed" identity group.

I know it's confusing, but hopefully this helps clarify the complicated relationship between Marxism, neo-Marxism, postmodernism, and their kind of mutant-hybrid descendant, Critical Social Justice scholarship and activism. So it goes when radical Marxian-Utopian activism evolves against both reality and the solid liberal societies that successfully push back at all of its many endless attempts to undermine society from within.

QuoteWhistleblower at Smith College Resigns Over Racism

Jodi Shaw made less in a year than the cost of tuition. She was offered a settlement, but turned it down. Here's why.

We all know that something morally grotesque is swallowing liberal America. Almost no one wants to risk talking about it out loud.

Every day I get phone calls from anxious Americans complaining about an ideology that wants to pull all of us into the past.

I get calls from parents telling me about the damaging things being taught in schools: so-called antiracist programs that urge children to obsess on the color of their skin.

I get calls from people working in corporate America forced to go to trainings in which they learn that they carry collective, race-based guilt — or benefit from collective, race-based virtue.

I get calls from young people just launching their careers telling me that they feel they have no choice but to profess fealty to this ideology in order to keep their jobs.

Almost no one who calls me is willing to go public. And I understand why. To go public with what's happening is to risk their jobs and their reputations.

But the hour is very late. It calls for courage. And courage has come in the form of a woman named Jodi Shaw.

Jodi Shaw was, until this afternoon, a staffer at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She made $45,000 a year — less than the yearly tuition at the school.

She is a divorced mother of two children. She is a lifelong liberal and an alumna of the college. And she has had a front-row seat to the illiberal, neo-racist ideology masquerading as progress.

In October 2020, after Shaw felt that she had exhausted all her internal options, she posted a video on YouTube, blowing the whistle on, what she says, is an atmosphere of racial discrimination at the school.

"I ask that Smith College stop reducing my personhood to a racial category. Stop telling me what I must think and feel about myself," she said. "Stop presuming to know who I am or what my culture is based upon my skin color. Stop asking me to project stereotypes and assumptions onto others based on their skin color."

Watch the whole thing here:

QuoteNow today, she is resigning from the college.

In doing that — and in speaking out — she is turning down a settlement that would have given her a much easier way out. We need more people like her.

Here's how Shaw put it in her resignation letter to Smith College President Kathleen McCartney, which she sent to me to publish in full:

(...)

I graduated from Smith College in 1993. Those four years were among the best in my life. Naturally, I was over the moon when, years later, I had the opportunity to join Smith as a staff member. I loved my job and I loved being back at Smith.

But the climate — and my place at the college — changed dramatically when, in July 2018, the culture war arrived at our campus when a student accused a white staff member of calling campus security on her because of racial bias. The student, who is black, shared her account of this incident widely on social media, drawing a lot of attention to the college.

Before even investigating the facts of the incident, the college immediately issued a public apology to the student, placed the employee on leave, and announced its intention to create new initiatives, committees, workshops, trainings, and policies aimed at combating "systemic racism" on campus.

In spite of an independent investigation into the incident that found no evidence of racial bias, the college ramped up its initiatives aimed at dismantling the supposed racism that pervades the campus. This only served to support the now prevailing narrative that the incident had been racially motivated and that Smith staff are racist.

Allowing this narrative to dominate has had a profound impact on the Smith community and on me personally. For example, in August 2018, just days before I was to present a library orientation program into which I had poured a tremendous amount of time and effort, and which had previously been approved by my supervisors, I was told that I could not proceed with the planned program. Because it was going to be done in rap form and "because you are white," as my supervisor told me, that could be viewed as "cultural appropriation." My supervisor made clear he did not object to a rap in general, nor to the idea of using music to convey orientation information to students. The problem was my skin color.

I was up for a full-time position in the library at that time, and I was essentially informed that my candidacy for that position was dependent upon my ability, in a matter of days, to reinvent a program to which I had devoted months of time.

Humiliated, and knowing my candidacy for the full-time position was now dead in the water, I moved into my current, lower-paying position as Student Support Coordinator in the Department of Residence Life.

As it turned out, my experience in the library was just the beginning. (...)

(...)

Quote from: zupi on 14.02.2021, 21:28:05
Aasialaisiin kohdistunut väkivalta on USAssa kovassa kasvussa, tekijät kaikki tietää. (...)

QuoteCRT appears in our workplaces under the cover of implicit bias/sensitivity training . It infiltrates our schools pretending to be culturally/ethnically responsive pedagogy , with curricula such as the New York Times' 1619 Project and Seattle's ethnomathematics . Hate groups, with allies in politics, the press and education, pass CRT off as anti-racism and diversity, equity and inclusion , but CRT is exactly the opposite. From its very roots, CRT is racist, repressive, discriminatory, and divisive.

Quote(...) The kids were then told to check themselves off on a list of victimization categories -- race, gender, religion, family structure -- to find out which categories made them oppressors , and which made them oppressed . A Chinese parent found out about this and organized parents to stop it. It reminded them of Mao's bloody Cultural Revolution. (...)

QuoteChinese Americans are people of color and therefore start from the oppressed side of CRT's binary. But as we overcome discrimination and achieve upward mobility, we are now White by adjacency. In New York City, Black Lives Matter rioters with CRT signs assaulted our rally supporting merit-based education. We have come into CRT's crosshair.

Education is the main area where CRT attacked us. CRT, naturally, demands automatic preferences for Blacks in admissions to selective institutions and programs. That is unacceptable to us: such racial preferences come at the expense of our children, at the expense of academic standards, and at the expense of basic fairness.

For top colleges, CRT uses the ruse of multiple-criteria holistic admissions , which allows Harvard to reject Asians with better academic and extra-curricular credentials than those of admitted applicants. Despite never having met the applicants, Harvard admissions officers somehow conclude that Asian applicants lack integrity and courage -- directly contradicting evaluations from interviewers who met the applicants, and from teachers who've known the applicants for months if not years. If smearing Asians this way isn't hate speech , then what is? Call it diversity, equity and inclusion .

QuoteOne way or another, CRT wants to get rid of too many Asians in good schools. Asians are over-represented . CRT is today's Chinese Exclusion Act. CRT is the real hate crime against Asians.

Some of CRT's hate speeches against Asians are obvious: too many Asians and Stuyvesant doesn't look like the City need no explanation. They can also be subtle. For example: Stuyvesant is not diverse . Since when is it not diverse for a school to have dozens of languages spoken at home, all major world faiths practiced, most cultural experiences inherited, from ancient civilization-building to rise and fall of empires, to slavery, colonization, revolution, and diaspora? Even if CRT dismisses all this and reduces everything to just looks -- do all Asians look alike to them?

QuoteThe story begins with the district's diversity czar, Fatima Morell, who developed a new antiracism curriculum and told teachers they must become "woke" and achieve "critical consciousness," a Marxist pedagogical concept training students to identify and subvert their oppressors.

QuoteIn a presentation to teachers, Morell claimed that America "is built on racism" and that "America's sickness" leads some whites to believe that black people are "not human," which makes it "easier to shoot [them] in the back seven times if you feel like it."

QuoteLast year, Fox News reported on the district's mandatory Black Lives Matter curriculum, which required schools to commit to "dismantling cisgender privilege," creating "queer-affirming network(s)," and accelerating "the disruption of Western nuclear family dynamics."

QuoteThe individual lessons, which I have obtained, are even more divisive. In kindergarten, teachers require students to watch a video that dramatizes dead black children warning them about the dangers of being killed by "racist police and state-sanctioned violence."

QuoteIn middle school, students are told that "all white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism" and that "white elites work to perpetuate racism through politics, law, education, and the media." Whites derive their wealth from slavery and are "unfairly rich."

QuoteIn high school, students must begin "confronting whiteness in [their] classrooms," with teachers asking white students to atone for their "white privilege" and to "use their voices" for the cause of left-wing "antiracism." They must become activists.

QuoteTeachers within Buffalo Public Schools tell me the new antiracism program pushes "radical politics" into the classroom and has devolved into "scoldings, guilt-trips, and demands to demean oneself simply to make another feel 'empowered.'" Teachers are afraid to speak out.

QuoteBuffalo Public Schools are a disaster: by fifth grade, only 18 percent of students are proficient in math and 20 percent are proficient in English; one-third of all students fail to graduate from high school. The new "antiracism" program will do nothing to improve these outcomes.

Quote from: zupi on 24.02.2021, 14:07:45

This survey from Skeptic Mag is fascinating. Huge numbers of liberals and moderates think that over 100 unarmed black men were killed by cops in 2019. Many think the number is over 1,000 or 10,000. Even conservatives think it's about 100. The actual number is 13. pic.twitter.com/fp2tkwzr4R
- Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) February 23, 2021

Quote from: zupi on 21.01.2021, 23:51:04
Pistetään tähän linkki toiseen ketjuun / James Lindsayn kirjoitukseen siitä, miksi woke / CSJ-porukka ei suostu väittelyihin.

https://hommaforum.org/index.php/topic,131606.msg3267269.html#msg3267269 (https://hommaforum.org/index.php/topic,131606.msg3267269.html#msg3267269)

https://newdiscourses.com/2020/07/woke-wont-debate-you-heres-why/ (https://newdiscourses.com/2020/07/woke-wont-debate-you-heres-why/)

QuoteThe article in the Times stated, "But the right, for all its chest-beating about the value of entertaining dangerous notions, is rarely interested in debating the tenets of critical race theory. It wants to eradicate them from public institutions." The piece followed with a lengthy section about Rufo

QuoteThe Book Amazon Does Not Want You to Read

You may have heard by now that Amazon has banned from all of their sales channels Ryan T. Anderson's excellent book, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment (Encounter Books, 2018).

At First Things, Anderson writes about the controversy:

The people who did read the book discovered that it is an accurate and accessible presentation of the scientific, medical, philosophical, and legal debates surrounding the trans phenomenon. Yes, it advances an argument against transgender ideology from a viewpoint. But it doesn't get any facts wrong, and it doesn't engage in heated rhetoric.

Moreover, it was praised by experts: the former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, a longtime psychology professor at NYU, a professor of medical ethics at Columbia Medical School, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Boston University, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Utah, a distinguished professor at Harvard Law School, an eminent legal philosopher at Oxford, and a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton.

But for a heretic-hunting Left, none of that matters. It's not about how you say it, or how rigorously you argue it, or how charitably you present it. It's about whether you affirm or dissent from the new orthodoxy of gender ideology.

The editors at National Review call attention to Anderson's intellectual credentials but also his calm, clear, and compassionate disposition as an advocate for truth in the public square

QuoteThis book exposes the contrast between the media's sunny depiction of gender fluidity and the often sad reality of living with gender dysphoria. It gives a voice to people who tried to "transition" by changing their bodies, and found themselves no better off. Especially troubling are the stories told by adults who were encouraged to transition as children but later regretted subjecting themselves to those drastic procedures.

As Anderson shows, the most beneficial therapies focus on helping people accept themselves and live in harmony with their bodies. This understanding is vital for parents with children in schools where counselors may steer a child toward transitioning behind their backs.

Everyone has something at stake in the controversies over transgender ideology, when misguided "antidiscrimination" policies allow biological men into women's restrooms and penalize Americans who hold to the truth about human nature. Anderson offers a strategy for pushing back with principle and prudence, compassion and grace.

QuoteThe Department of Education recommends a reading that claims babies are not "colorblind" and that parents must instill "antiracist attitudes and actions" beginning at birth, in order for their children to not "absorb bias from the world around them."

QuoteAnother recommended reading claims that "all white people are white in the context of a society that continues to disadvantage people of color based on race." The document teaches schools how to "change what it means to be white" and inculcate an "antiracist white identity."

QuoteThe Department provides additional resources for "families & community," telling white parents that they "can have a black friend, partner, or child and still be racist." The article claims that white people deny their own racism to "alleviate some of their white fragility."

QuoteSix Dr. Seuss books cancelled due to allegations of racism

QuoteThis comes as President Joe Biden pulled Dr. Seuss' books from Read Across America Day, an initiative that was founded in the author's honor. The left-wing educators group called Learning for Justice demanded that Dr. Seuss books be removed from the reading list due to alleged "racial undertones" that are not suitable for "culturally responsive" learning in his children's books.

QuoteThe decision to cease publication of these Dr. Seuss works was reportedly made last year.

Dr. Seuss, who was born in 1904, is often considered the most successful children's author of all time. As of 2020, he was the second highest paid dead celebrity next only to Michael Jackson.

QuoteThe cancellation of Dr. Seuss has faced criticism from conservatives, with commentator Ben Shapiro saying "we've now got foundations book burning the authors to whom they are dedicated. Well done, everyone."

Quote from: zupi on 03.03.2021, 00:11:49
Woke-natseille ei enää riitä aivopesu kouluissa, homma pitää aloittaa heti syntymästä (ketju).

tweet 1366820252252733446

Quote from: zupi on 05.03.2021, 00:10:25
Anyone know of a solid film about the Chinese Cultural Revolution that we could promote so people can see what's going on around them?

QuoteA Jew in Mao's China

Even when I have been disenfranchised from God and synagogue, I have always been culturally proud to be a Jew. A source of that pride is the Jewish tradition of helping the oppressed, and our involvement in social movements such as labor and civil rights.

Until I saw the documentary "The Revolutionary" at the Philadelphia Independent Film Festival, I mistakenly thought that China during the revolutionary period was one country that had not felt the Jewish embrace. In fact, 85 to 90% of the foreigners helping the Chinese at the time of the Communist takeover were Jewish. This included the daughter of the founder of the brokerage firm Goldman Sachs, who left the comfort of her Park Avenue home to assist the Chinese.

The Revolutionary" tells the story of Southern-born, Sidney Rittenberg the only American that has ever been admitted to the Chinese Communist Party. The Mandarin-speaking Rittenberg, who was initially sent to China by the U.S. Army at the time of Japan's surrender at the end of World War II, became an influential advisor to Mao Zedong and to the first premier of the People's Republic of China, Zhou Enlai. His pivotal role at the Broadcast Authority, explaining the Communist Chinese point of view to America, earned him a higher salary than Chairman Mao.
...

QuoteCritical Race Fragility

The Left has denounced the "war on woke," but it is afraid to defend the principles of critical race theory in public debate.

The critical race theorists are feeling the heat. Over the past decade, they have had remarkable success in perpetuating the concepts of systemic racism, unconscious bias, white privilege, and white fragility in American institutions, beginning with universities and moving on to schools, government agencies, and multinational corporations. Their campaign began mostly without opposition, as most conservatives were either ignorant of what was happening or dismissed it as a campus fad.

That changed last year. (...)

This shift in momentum against the new racial orthodoxy, which has now grown beyond America's borders to England, France, Italy, Hungary, and Brazil, has rattled the American Left. Their first argument against this change is that conservatives are using state power to "cancel wokeness." New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg recently followed this line, attacking my work "leading the conservative charge against critical race theory," declaring that the Right wants to ban critical race theory because it is afraid to debate it. This is false, of course. For more than a year, prominent black intellectuals, including John McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Wilfred Reilly, and Coleman Hughes have challenged the critical race theorists to debate—and none has accepted. After Goldberg published her column, I called her bluff even further, challenging to "debate any prominent critical race theorist on the floor of the New York Times." Predictably, none responded, catching the New York Times in a fib and further exposing the critical race theorists' refusal to submit their ideas to public scrutiny.

(...)

However, for the critical race theorists, opposing racism is not categorical; it is instrumental. Official discrimination against blacks and Latinos is considered "bad"; official discrimination against whites and Asians is considered "good." Following Herbert Marcuse's dictum on "repressive tolerance," the modern Left has begun to enact a regime of officially sanctioned double standards: discrimination is encouraged, as long as it advances the Left's power.

(...)

The critical race theorists, on the other hand, have embraced a philosophy of European-style pessimism, dismissing equality under the law as "mere nondiscrimination." They would replace it with a system of "equity" that treats individuals unequally in order to arrive at equal group outcomes. Most Americans, lulled into complacency by the race theorists' manipulative homonymy—suggesting continuity between "equality" and "equity"—would be outraged at the true nature of these ideas, which are simply a reformulation of the Marxist oppressor/oppressed dialectic, replacing the class categories of "bourgeoisie" and "proletariat" with the racial categories of "white" and "black."

(...) This is the proper context for evaluating critical race theory, which is an almost entirely government-created and government-sponsored ideology, developed in public and publicly-subsidized universities, formulated into policy by public bureaucracies, and transmitted to children in the public school system. The critical race theorists and their enablers at the New York Times and elsewhere want the right to enshrine their personal ideology as official state dogma. They prioritize the "freedom of the state" over the "freedom of the individual"—the prelude, whether deliberate or accidental, to any totalitarian system.

The backlash against CRT will likely come as a surprise to many adherents of the intellectual Left, who have become accustomed to dominance over our public institutions. They perceive any challenge to the dominant ideology as an affront, then search to backfill their preferences with high-minded concerns about "free speech" and "academic freedom." For the woke and their enablers in the media, there is no greater offense than transgression against The Narrative.

They better get used to it. The "anti-woke" movement is gaining momentum and building an infrastructure to contest this ideology in government, schools, and academia. The critical race theorists' strategic response—refusing to debate and hoping critics will go away—won't work. Eventually, the public will recognize their "critical race fragility" for what it is: a prickly refusal to submit one's ideas to vigorous public debate, often characterized by projection, emotional flagellation, and poor argumentation. Against the critical race theorists, we have begun to marshal investigative reporting, lawsuits, legislation, and parental activism—all in defense of American principles.

QuotePaoletta: Amazon Prime Stops Streaming Clarence Thomas Documentary During Black History Month


(...)

Recently, Amazon Prime dropped Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words, an acclaimed and popular PBS documentary on Justice Clarence Thomas, making it unavailable to stream during Black History Month.  Thomas is our nation's only black justice currently serving on the U.S. Supreme Court, and one would think that between Amazon's claim to "building an inclusive culture" and the fact that it's Black History Month, Amazon would want to stream this inspiring documentary on its platform.

(...)

Amazon has made a significant effort to celebrate black voices on its site during Black History Month, including films of Thurgood Marshall and even Anita Hill, but can't find any space for a documentary on our only sitting black Supreme Court justice? This makes no sense at all, other than Amazon made a decision to not show this film because Justice Thomas is a black justice who has conservative views.

(...)

Justice Thomas's incredible story is one that every American should know – and in particular, every black American. He was born in 1948 in deep poverty in the Deep South of segregated Georgia, living from birth under Jim Crow laws. His parents had almost no education, and his father left the family before he was two. Thomas's life changed when he was 7 years old, when he and his younger brother went to live with his grandparents.

Despite being uneducated, his grandfather built a small business delivering oil, coal, firewood, and ice in Savannah.  His grandfather was tough on Thomas and his younger brother, but they learned the values of hard work and perseverance.  Thomas's grandfather always said, "Old Man Can't is dead.  I helped bury him."

(...)

In his nearly 30 years on the Supreme Court, Thomas has developed the most comprehensive and consistent originalist jurisprudence of any justice to serve on the Court.  Leftwing legal writer Ian Millhiser wrote in 2018 that Thomas is "the most important legal thinker of his generation and the most significant appointment of the last forty years."  One well-regarded Supreme Court practitioner who founded the prominent SCOTUSblog noted that Thomas is "our greatest Justice."  CBS Supreme Court reporter Jan Crawford proved, based on internal Court documents, that Thomas was a force from the very first day he sat on the Court, pulling the Court in his direction.

But Thomas's views are anathema to "civil rights" leaders and groups, such as Al Sharpton and Black Lives Matter, who make their living and lots of money claiming that America is a systemically racist country and push policies that define individuals based only on the color of their skin.  This groupthink also led the African American History Museum in 2016 to exclude any exhibit on Justice Thomas in its first year of existence, despite Thomas being the second and longest-serving black Supreme Court justice in history, only begrudgingly adding a section that still is unfair to the justice.

In a conversation a few years ago where I was present, Thomas pointed out the absurdity of the left's progressivism by noting that everyone would agree that if a black man were barred from entering a library because of the color of his skin, that would universally and rightly be regarded as racist, but the left is fine with telling that same black man he can enter that library but he can never be allowed to agree with the content of certain books because of the color of his skin.

(...)

Thomas Sowell and the late Walter Williams – two accomplished and well-regarded black conservative economists – have written for decades about how liberal social policies beginning with Great Society programs in the 1960s and continuing today have failed miserably.  Can there be any doubt of failure for policies that have contributed to the black out-of-wedlock birthrate going from 11 percent in 1938 to more than 75 percent today? That 82 percent of black households were two-parent in 1950 and today more than 70 percent of black households are headed by a single mother?  But to question these policies is racist?

(...)

As these words show, Clarence Thomas is a man who speaks his mind and does not bend to anyone.  Created Equal covers Thomas's amazing life story in a one-on-one interview with Thomas that is unprecedented in Supreme Court history.

This is a film that should be widely streamed by Amazon at all times – and particularly during Black History Month – to show the diversity of thought in the black community and to celebrate Thomas's amazing life journey. Amazon does a great disservice to all Americans, and particularly black Americans, when it decides not to show an inspiring film about an incredible Black American during Black History Month.

QuoteIn 2015, Forbes magazine said: "It's a scandal that economist Thomas Sowell has not been awarded the Nobel Prize. No one alive has turned out so many insightful, richly researched books." Yet, thanks in part to the Ebony shutout, many blacks have never heard of him.

Quote
Woman fired from her job because she looked at a black person "the wrong way "

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJzk2ERPnHg
0:59

Quote from: JiM on 07.03.2021, 00:44:16
Amerikassa tilanne on tällä hetkellä jotain näinkin edistyksellistä.. tai jopa mielisairasta..

Quote
Woman fired from her job because she looked at a black person "the wrong way "

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJzk2ERPnHg
0:59

Quote from: Supernuiva on 07.03.2021, 08:58:43

QuoteWoman fired from her job because she looked at a black person "the wrong way "

QuoteCritical Race Theory is a Victimization Cult

It is not a particularly unique observation to notice that the Critical Social Justice movement, particularly the part that embraces Critical Race Theory, bears tremendous resemblance to a secular religion. (...)

While there is much merit in Professor Campbell's analysis, I wonder whether it goes far enough. Religion, when taken to extremes, tends no longer to promote love, acceptance, and a sense of community and fulfillment—the stated goals of most religions. Religious extremism promotes violence, intolerance, tribalism, and a deliberately confused mental state in its adherents. When that happens, when religion "goes to the dark side," we stop using the term religion, and start using the word "cult."

As a former CIA officer, I know what that kind of cult looks like. I can't write about my own counterterror operations, or any training I may have gotten from the CIA in persuasion and indoctrination without having to submit it for pre-publication review to the CIA. But nothing stops me from highlighting the work of others on the same topic, so we can see what the ideological conversion of a cult looks like up close and personal.

Some of the best journalism on the terror group ISIS—a cult within a religion—was done by Rukmini Callimachi, whose Peabody-winning podcast, The Caliphate presents a grim journey into the heart of darkness. It is not for the faint of heart, as it includes detailed descriptions of beatings, gruesome executions, and religiously-justified systematic rape.

The Caliphate follows a young Canadian whose nom de guerre is Abu Huzayfah. He starts as an ISIS fanboy watching videos of violence in the Syrian civil war, but when he shows up in online chat forums about the war, he gets engaged by lurking ISIS recruiters who use techniques explicitly designed to rob converts of the ability to think critically.

Eventually he finds himself in Syria, operating as an ISIS policeman, flogging a man bloody for the crime of not forcing his wife into a niqab, and executing fellow Sunni Muslims (who ISIS claims to protect) for the crime of not surrendering abjectly to ISIS. And how does he justify murdering follow Sunni Muslims? It's their fault, apparently. He had no agency in their deaths, even though he pulled the trigger. By not turning their town over to ISIS the instant ISIS appeared, "They killed themselves," he stated.

He finishes his direct involvement by fleeing ISIS territory after his second murder on their behalf, disillusioned, but no less full of willful blindness about the harm caused by his radical views, as well as convenient self-justifications for why he doesn't need to confess his murders to the Canadian police. This story, though far more brutal and gruesome, contains elucidating parallels to the rapid rise of Critical Race Theory in contemporary Western culture. Though there are many obvious differences, given our present context, it's worth examining how ISIS and Al Qaeda lure in recruits in some detail.

(...)(...)

In Hassan's book, Combating Cult Mind Control, he outlines what he calls the "BITE model" of cult manipulation. Not every cult follows every aspect of the BITE model, but every cult does some or most of the BITE techniques. These techniques begin lightly and get increasingly severe as cult recruitment progresses from initiation to indoctrination into reprogramming.

These techniques are relevant in all cult contexts. They are also clearly evidenced in the moral panic sweeping the country, which operates through the ideology of Critical Race Theory.

[James Lindsay: For the last several weeks, my Twitter DMs, private messages, and email are bombarded daily by messages from scared and upset people reporting the sinister instances of CRT in action in their own lives—from their workplaces to their institutions to their social lives and to their romantic relationships—the phrases and actions in brackets following each BITE bullet point are examples of how CRT is showing up in real life. Each echoes a commonplace sentiment in the CRT research and popular literature and its related social activism.]

The B in BITE is Behavior Control. It includes

Instill dependence and obedience ["Do better"]
Modify behavior with rewards and punishments ["This apology leaves a lot out and is still very racist"]
Dictate where and with whom you live [This is most nearly applicable in schools and various "spaces" that are to be "desegregated," by which is meant excluding white and white-adjacent people in the name of inclusion; easily extends to living arrangements]
Restrict or control your sexuality [more prominent in queer and trans activism than CRT, but characterizing lack of attraction to certain features as racism and attraction to them as exoticization and fetishization]
Control your clothing and hairstyle [cultural appropriation, decolonizing hair and fashion]

(...)

The I is Information Control

Deliberately withhold and distort information [decolonize the curriculum, remove "white" sources from the canon and education, characterize disagreement as "privilege-preserving" or "race-traitorous"]
Forbid you from communicating with ex members and critics [cancel culture, conservatives and liberals are Nazis]
Restrict access to non-cult sources of information [Those resources are written from a racist position in order to uphold white supremacy]

(...)

Require you to report your thoughts and feelings to superiors [forced confessions of complicity in racism or else one suffers white fragility]
Encourage you to spy and report on others' misconduct [cancel and dox culture]
Use "Big Brother" surveillance methods [everyone has a camera in their pocket and will load any racist behavior they can find onto the internet in a heartbeat]

The T is Thought Control

Teach you to internalize to internalize group doctrine as "Truth" (a la Robert Lifton's "sacred science") [Lived experience is the best arbiter of "lived realities"; Critical Race Theory is sociology, race research, or even "science," real science suffers white biases and isn't to be trusted, Critical Race Theory uses emotion and stories and thus is authentic, disagreement with Critical Race Theory is always ideologically and politically motivated by white supremacy; you need to forward black and brown voices; believe black (women); disagreement is false consciousness/internalized racism/willful or white ignorance]
Instill Black vs. White, Us vs Them, and Good vs. Evil thinking [racist versus anti-racist; there is no not-racist; choosing not to be anti-racist is choosing racism; there is no neutral; brown complicity is a form of anti-blackness that is pushed upon brown people by white supremacy and upholds it]

(...)

Use loaded language and clichés to stop critical/complex thought [all of the words "racist," "antiracist," "fascist," "antifascist," "Nazi," "alt-right," "sexist," "misogynist," "homophobe," "transphobe," "ableist," "fatphobic," and so on and endlessly so forth are clear examples; others include "white fragility"; "sounds about white"; "check your privilege"; "somebody's triggered"]
Teach thought-stopping techniques to prevent critical thinking and reality testing ["oh, look, another white man giving his opinion on Critical Race Theory"; disagreement is a means of "privilege-preserving epistemic pushback" just meant to maintain one's privileged status]
Reject rational analysis, critical thinking, and constructive criticisms [all engagement that isn't critical engagement is inauthentic, supports racism, comes from false consciousness, internalized dominance, internalized racism, willful ignorance, white fragility, biased, privilege preserving]

(...)

The E is Emotional Control

Instill irrational fears of questioning/leaving group [cancel culture, dox culture; accusations of being branded a racist and shunned or fired; you won't be part of "the community"]
Make you feel elitist and special ["you're on the right side of history"; "you're in solidarity with the Truth"]
Promote feelings of guilt, shame, and unworthy ["good white people"; "I define as a white progressive any white person who thinks they are not racist or less racist" and they are the worst for upholding white supremacy culture]
Elicit extreme emotional highs and lows ["you're on the right side of history"... "you did it wrong, centered yourself, you're still racist"]

(...)

An additional trait of CRT that likens it to cult environments is the hyper-attentive focus on the central idea of the cult doctrine: systemic racism, which is believed to pervade everything, be "ordinary," and is considered permanent. According to many CRT advocates, including the bestselling Robin DiAngelo, racism is present in and relevant to every interaction and circumstance. The question, she says, must move away from "did racism take place?" to "how did racism manifest in this situation?" For her, every situation and interaction contains racism, and the devotee of her program is to focus obsessively on finding it and calling it out.

(...)

Under CRT, then, race is expected to be given ultimate social significance and racism is believed to pervade every possible occurrence and interaction. Thus, race and racism are always of central relevance to CRT thought, which dramatically increases and focuses the control-based elements of the BITE model. All behavior must be CRT-appropriate. So must the information one takes in and communicates, the thoughts one has, and the emotions one expresses because anything else signals racism that must be "interrogated" and "dismantled."

(...)

In attributing all differences between different racial groups to racism, they're proposing univariate solutions to multivariate problems. This means not only is their project is doomed to fail and leave many black people stuck at the bottom of the socio economic ladder, it will do so only after wildly alienating the majority of the country. Moreover, "systemic racism" is intentionally vague enough to be quasi-spiritual in nature. It is, as James Lindsay has described it, "racism of the gaps" that can continually be appealed to as the cause of problems or disparities even when there is no evidence of discrimination or strong evidence against discrimination.

To pick just one example of how CRT's oversimplification provides incorrect diagnoses and solutions to what's driving systemic inequality in the black community, consider a line from "Black Lives Matter's" manifesto.

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and "villages" that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

Notice the word missing from that phrase? Fathers. (...)

Critical Race Theory is not a recipe for racial progress, but unmitigated strife and ultimate disaster for black America and the broader America of which it is a part. This is why we need to turn our backs on this cult.


Art Keller is Contributing Editor at The Technoskeptic, covering privacy and national security. He has contributed to Quillette, Forbes, Newsweek, The New York Times, New York Daily News, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Value Walk, and West Point's counterterrorism journal, the CTC Sentinel. He is a former CIA case officer who combated terrorism and nuclear/missile proliferation. Select work is available at Artkeller.com. He is @artkeller on Twitter.

QuoteThe Miseducation of America's Elites

Affluent parents, terrified of running afoul of the new orthodoxy in their children's private schools, organize in secret.

(...)

By normal American standards, they are quite wealthy. By the standards of Harvard-Westlake, they are average. These are two-career couples who credit their own success not to family connections or inherited wealth but to their own education. So it strikes them as something more than ironic that a school that costs more than $40,000 a year — a school with Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's right hand, and Sarah Murdoch, wife of Lachlan and Rupert's daughter-in-law, on its board — is teaching students that capitalism is evil.

For most parents, the demonization of capitalism is the least of it. They say that their children tell them they're afraid to speak up in class. Most of all, they worry that the school's new plan to become an "anti-racist institution" — unveiled this July, in a 20-page document — is making their kids fixate on race and attach importance to it in ways that strike them as grotesque.

(...)

The parents in the backyard say that for every one of them, there are many more, too afraid to speak up. "I've talked to at least five couples who say: I get it. I think the way you do. I just don't want the controversy right now," related one mother. They are all eager for their story to be told — but not a single one would let me use their name. They worry about losing their jobs or hurting their children if their opposition to this ideology were known.

"The school can ask you to leave for any reason," said one mother at Brentwood, another Los Angeles prep school. "Then you'll be blacklisted from all the private schools and you'll be known as a racist, which is worse than being called a murderer."

One private school parent, born in a Communist nation, tells me: "I came to this country escaping the very same fear of retaliation that now my own child feels." Another joked: "We need to feed our families. Oh, and pay $50,000 a year to have our children get indoctrinated." A teacher in New York City put it most concisely: "To speak against this is to put all of your moral capital at risk."

(...)

That fear is shared, deeply, by the children. For them, it's not just the fear of getting a bad grade or getting turned down for a college recommendation, though that fear is potent. It's the fear of social shaming. "If you publish my name, it would ruin my life. People would attack me for even questioning this ideology. I don't even want people knowing I'm a capitalist," a student at the Fieldston School in New York City told me, in a comment echoed by other students I spoke with. (Fieldston declined to comment for this article.) "The kids are scared of other kids," says one Harvard-Westlake mother.

The atmosphere is making their children anxious, paranoid, and insecure — and closed off from even their close friends. "My son knew I was talking to you and he begged me not to," another Harvard-Westlake mother told me. "He wants to go to a great university, and he told me that one bad statement from me will ruin us. This is the United States of America. Are you freaking kidding me?"

Woke-Weaning for Harvard

These are America's elites — the families who can afford to pay some $50,000 a year for their children to be groomed for the eating clubs of Princeton and the secret societies of Yale, the glide path to becoming masters — sorry, masterx — of the universe. The ideas and values instilled in them influence the rest of us.

(...)

Power in America now comes from speaking woke, a highly complex and ever-evolving language. (...)

'Educated in Resentment and Fear'

"I am in a cult. Well, that's not exactly right. It's that the cult is all around me and I am trying to save kids from becoming members." He sounds like a Scientology defector, but he is a math teacher at one of the most elite high schools in New York City. He is not politically conservative. "I studied critical theory; I saw Derrida speak when I was in college," he says, "so when this ideology arrived at our school over the past few years, I recognized the language and I knew what it was. But it was in a mutated form."

This teacher is talking with me because he is alarmed by the toll this ideology is taking on his students. "I started seeing what was happening to the kids. And that's what I couldn't take. They are being educated in resentment and fear. It's extremely dangerous."

Three thousand miles away, in Los Angeles, another prep-school teacher says something similar. "It teaches people who have so much to see themselves as victims. They think they are suffering oppression at one of the poshest schools in the country."

(...)

'We Don't Call Them Newton's Laws Anymore'

The science program at Fieldston would make any parent swoon. The electives for 11th- and 12th-graders, according to the school's website, include immunology, astronomy, neuroscience, and pharmacology.

But physics looks different these days. "We don't call them Newton's laws anymore," an upperclassman at the school informs me. "We call them the three fundamental laws of physics. They say we need to 'decenter whiteness,' and we need to acknowledge that there's more than just Newton in physics."

(...)

A screenshot of "Accomplices Not Allies."

To question any of the curricular changes, parents say, is to make yourself suspect: "Every group chat I'm on with school parents, with the exception of my concerned parents' group, they have a pattern of shaming anyone who shares anything remotely political or dissents from the group narrative," one Brentwood mother wrote to me. "Once someone shames one person, many chime in agreement. The times I speak up to defend those they shame, they attempt to shame me."

(...)

One teacher told me that he was asked to teach an antiracist curriculum that included a "pyramid" of white supremacy. At the top was genocide. At the bottom was "two sides to every story."

"'Two sides to every story,'" he said. "That was on the racist pyramid."
The pyramid of racism includes "we all belong to the human race."

'Mom, I Just Found Out I'm Racist'

But the most important consequence of the woke ideology isn't a lesser English curriculum. It's that the ideology, which seems to touch every aspect of schooling now, has changed children's self-conception.

(...)

For high schoolers, the message is more explicit. A Fieldston student says that students are often told "if you are white and male, you are second in line to speak." This is considered a normal and necessary redistribution of power.

(...)

Doublethinkers in American High Schools

(...)

Some students are rebelling, which, in this case, looks like becoming a Republican. But others go all-in on the ideology, which has created conflicts with parents who don't. "The school has taken over as the moral guide, with me being the irritating person in the background who doesn't really get it," says one Harvard-Westlake mother.

So children learn how the new rules of woke work. The idea of lying in order to please a teacher seems like a phenomenon from the Soviet Union. But the high schoolers I spoke with said that they do versions of this, including parroting views they don't believe in assignments so that their grades don't suffer.

(...)

A Conspiracy of Silence

When I began working on this story, I didn't feel that much sympathy for these parents. (...)

The parents in this story are not parents with no other options. Most have the capital — social and literal — to pull their kids out and hire private tutors. That they weren't speaking out seemed to me cowardly, or worse.

The cynical answer for their silence is two words: Ivy League. "There are definitively rumors that the school has like, say, three picks for Duke and that if you stand up against this your kid will get blackballed," says one mother.

Another explanation is groupthink and social pressure. (...) Most people want to be members of the club."

I think it's true that many people would rather violate their stated principles than be iced out of their social network. But this is a situation that goes beyond getting shunted to a bad table at the Robin Hood gala. To resist this ideology is to go against the entire institutional world.

(...)

This ideology isn't speaking truth to power. It is the power.

Most alarmingly, the ideology is increasingly prevalent at the local public school. The incoming New York City schools chancellor is a vocal proponent of critical race theory. In Burbank, the school district just told middle- and high school teachers to stop teaching To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men. The Sacramento school district is promoting racial segregation by way of "racial affinity groups," where students can "cultivate racial solidarity and compassion and support each other in sitting with the discomfort, confusion, and numbness that often accompany white racial awakening." The San Diego school district recently held a training in which white teachers were told that they "spirit murder" black children.

"I don't mean to get emotional, I just feel helpless," said one mother through tears. "I look at the public school and I am equally mortified. I can't believe what they are doing to everybody. I'm too afraid. I'm too afraid to speak too loudly. I feel cowardly. I just make little waves." Another tells me: "It's fear of retribution. Would it cause our daughter to be ostracized? Would it cause people to ostracize us? It already has."

(...)

QuoteRevenge of the Gods

California's proposed ethnic studies curriculum urges students to chant to the Aztec deity of human sacrifice.

(...)

The new program, called the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, seeks to extend the Left's cultural dominance of California's public university system, 50 years in the making, to the state's entire primary and secondary education system, which consists of 10,000 public schools serving a total of 6 million students.

(...)

R. Tolteka Cuauhtin, the original co-chair of the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, developed much of the material regarding early American history. In his book Rethinking Ethnic Studies, which is cited throughout the curriculum, Cuauhtin argues that the United States was founded on a "Eurocentric, white supremacist (racist, anti-Black, anti-Indigenous), capitalist (classist), patriarchal (sexist and misogynistic), heteropatriarchal (homophobic), and anthropocentric paradigm brought from Europe." The document claims that whites began "grabbing the land," "hatching hierarchies," and "developing for Europe/whiteness," which created "excess wealth" that "became the basis for the capitalist economy." Whites established a "hegemony" that continues to the present day, in which minorities are subjected to "socialization, domestication, and 'zombification.'"

The religious narrative is even more disturbing. Cuauhtin developed a related "mandala" claiming that white Christians committed "theocide" against indigenous tribes, killing their gods and replacing them with Christianity. (...) The ultimate goal is to "decolonize" American society and establish a new regime of "countergenocide" and "counterhegemony," which will displace white Christian culture and lead to the "regeneration of indigenous epistemic and cultural futurity."

This religious concept is fleshed out in the model curriculum's official "ethnic studies community chant." The curriculum recommends that teachers lead their students in a series of indigenous songs, chants, and affirmations, including the "In Lak Ech Affirmation," which appeals directly to the Aztec gods. Students first clap and chant to the god Tezkatlipoka—whom the Aztecs traditionally worshipped with human sacrifice and cannibalism—asking him for the power to be "warriors" for "social justice." Next, the students chant to the gods Quetzalcoatl, Huitzilopochtli, and Xipe Totek, seeking "healing epistemologies" and "a revolutionary spirit." Huitzilopochtli, in particular, is the Aztec deity of war and inspired hundreds of thousands of human sacrifices during Aztec rule. Finally, the chant comes to a climax with a request for "liberation, transformation, [and] decolonization," after which students shout "Panche beh! Panche beh!" in pursuit of ultimate "critical consciousness."

(...)

California parents should be concerned. Under the guise of "equity" and "empowerment," activists within the public education system have developed this radical new curriculum in order to transform California schools into factories for left-wing political activism. (...) it presents education not as a means of achieving competency, but as a "tool for transformation, social, economic, and political change, and liberation."

(...)

The state board of education will vote on this curriculum next week. Any sane governing body would reject it wholesale. Given the nature of California politics, though, the board is likely to pass it. (...)

Quote from: Mangustin on 13.03.2021, 17:17:37
^ Eikö nää ole kuulleet Guadalupen Neitsyen ilmestyksistä atsteekkimaajussi Juan Diegolle?  Atsteekit luopuivat julmista jumalistaan, koska halusivat itse päästä turvaan niiltä hallitsevan eliitin kansan orjuuttamiseen käyttämiltä verenhimoisilta demoneita.

QuoteIn Queers We Trust. All Others Pay Cash.

(...)

In the first months of 2018, I received an email from Hamish McKenzie, asking me to consider writing for his new platform. I had never heard of Substack, at that point, and nor had anyone else. (...)

There were writers who could make money out of this, Hamish assured me. If you worked at it full time, with at least four posts a month, preferably multiple posts a week, you could almost make as much as a real job.  (...)

(...) Here's what I think: Three years down the line, I'm still a feminist, I'm out as a trans person, and in the time I've been writing here, Substack has become famous for giving massive advances — the kind that were never once offered to me or my colleagues, not up front and not after the platform took off — to people who actively hate trans people and women, argue ceaselessly against our civil rights, and in many cases, have a public history of directly, viciously abusing trans people and/or cis women in their industry.

Glenn Greenwald started his Substack by inveighing against trans rights and/or ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio, is currently using it to direct harassment at a female New York Times reporter, and has repeatedly used his platform to whitewash alleged rapists and domestic abusers.  (...)

QuoteThose are just the assholes. Increasingly, Substack is tolerating and funding extreme trans-eliminationist rhetoric: They host Jesse Singal, a high-profile supporter of anti-trans conversion therapy who is also widely known to fixate on and stalk trans women in and around the media industry. I would list Jesse's targets, but at this point, I don't know a trans woman in media who doesn't have a story.  (...)

QuoteI'm not even listing all the problematic bylines here. (Andrew Sullivan! Bari Weiss!) Those bylines themselves are not the problem. Self-publishing platforms can't control who signs up. Substack isn't a self-publishing platform, though. It curates its writers. It pays them, sometimes massively, and it makes choices as to who gets paid well and who doesn't. We've seen instances of tech companies allowing hate group leaders to acquire huge followings through negligence, from white supremacist YouTube stars to a President who has to be banned from Twitter for trying to start a civil war, but those were cases where the platforms failed to keep bigots out. Substack is actively bringing the bigots in. Then it's giving them paychecks.

So where is Substack getting the money to pay the TERFs? Simple: From me.

Substack takes a small percentage of my subscription money, and that money goes to fund the writers they view to be better investments. I give them my money, and they use that money to pay men who have, in several instances, stalked or harassed either me or people I care about. (...) I gave Substack my trust, my name, and my credibility, and it used that credibility to platform hate groups aimed at eliminating me and everyone I care about from the face of the planet.

This is a very clear instance of how patriarchy and capitalism function together: Value is extracted from gender-marginalized writers, who are expected to work on bad and frankly insulting terms, and the wealth generated by those writers is then given to a select handful of mostly-white men who ceaselessly attack and seek to erode those workers' civil rights. I don't support it. I don't think any trans person should support it. Yet, by using the platform, I am inevitably enmeshing myself in that system of oppression, working for the people who are working for our destruction.

Coexisting with this knowledge is the painful truth that I think the actual work I do here is good. It might be some of the best writing I've done in recent years. My particular voice — idiosyncratic, conversational, prone to oversharing and going long — tends to work well in an informal context like a blog or a newsletter. Especially now that I'm transitioning, I need a place to put those more intimate and direct pieces, and the newsletter has become my favorite place to do that. I think this is probably the purest showcase for who I am as a writer, and I don't want to lose it.

I also don't want to lose the income. I honestly can't remember what percentage Substack takes, but it's low, between seven and fifteen percent. Until recently, I've never had enough subscribers for it to matter. That's my fault: The platform couldn't offer serious terms, so I never took it seriously. (...)

Yet media is a precarious place to work. I've lost seemingly secure jobs for reasons beyond my control — a department got axed, a grant didn't get renewed, a friendly editor was replaced by one who wanted to go in a different direction — and if you work freelance, which I typically do, you can't file for unemployment when that happens. This place is my unemployment office. I've gotten to the point that I could use Substack to cover the rent if I lost all my other jobs. It's not a quarter-million bucks, but it matters.

So I have a choice to make, a choice that neither I nor any gender-marginalized person should ever have to make: Either I walk away from a necessary income stream and creative outlet, or I stay and allow my work to fund abuse, harassment, misogyny, and a movement that wants trans people silenced, impoverished, invisible and dead.

(...) Only Substack can remedy this situation, and it can do it only by shutting down platforms it's gotten a lot of money from and cis male voices it values a lot more highly than mine.

To be clear: There are also cis feminists taking major advances from Substack. They are not the ones threatening to quit; they are not freezing their subscriptions to deny Substack a (considerably bigger) chunk of change; they are not the ones most directly or severely impacted by the kinds of hate Substack is promoting, even though several of the men I've cited above, like Greenwald and De Boer, are misogynists and rape apologists in addition to their other problems. (...)

(...)

QuoteUPDATE #2: Hamish McKenzie has written a blog post justifying Substack's decisions.  (...)

In essence, Hamish believes that history will decide whether trans people are human beings deserving of civil rights. Or, at least, this is what he's arguing on behalf of the company he co-founded. He intimates vaguely that there are "other companies," in essence telling trans writers to stop using Substack if we don't want to work for and with people who believe us to be subhuman.

QuoteHamish McKenzie has made no effort to communicate with me, either publicly or privately, since this post was published.

QuoteEight Big Reasons Critical Race Theory Is Terrible for Dealing with Racism

As unlikely as it seems, a highly obscure academic theory known as Critical Race Theory has completely mainstreamed in society, and now everyone is discussing it. While Critical Race Theory has the noble goal of pointing out problems that can be hard to see and that maintain or constitute racism, it turns out to be a remarkably bad way of going about this. A little familiarity with the basic principles of Critical Race Theory and how they go wrong can help with this.

Before I begin, I offer my apologies to the reader. Critical Race Theory has been growing for over 40 years, and it has many deep problems. Therefore, this is long, and still it is not nearly complete. (...)

1) Critical Race Theory believes racism is present in every aspect of life, every relationship, and every interaction.

(...)

These assumptions lead people who take up Critical Race Theory to look for racism in everything until they find it. That is, after all, the job of a "critical" theorist or activist: to look for the hidden problems that they assume must be present in whatever they scrutinize.

In the workplace that adopts Critical Race Theory, this means that it's only a matter of time until someone with that worldview finds out how your entire company and its culture is "racist." At that point, they will cause a meltdown that forces everyone to take sides and demand a reorganization of the entire (now divided) office culture and management.

In schools, it will mean teaching our children to think this way and always be looking for racism in every situation and interaction.  (...)

2) "Interest convergence": White people only give black people opportunities and freedoms when it is also in their own interests.

(...)

The Interest-Convergence Thesis makes it literally impossible for anyone with any racial privilege (again, as outlined by Critical Race Theory) to do anything right because anything they do right must also have been self-interested. If Critical Race Theory makes a demand of people with any form of racial privilege and they comply, they just make themselves more complicit in "racism" as Critical Race Theory sees it. By giving people no way out, Critical Race Theory becomes deeply manipulative and unable to be satisfied in its lists of demands.

3) Critical Race Theory is against free societies.

Believe it or not, Critical Race Theory is not a liberal idea. It is, in fact, critical of liberal societies and against the idea of freedom to its core. Critical Race Theory sees a free society as a way to structure and maintain inequities by convincing racial minorities not to want to do radical identity politics. (...)

These movements [Critical Theory movements upon which Critical Race Theory is based] initially advocated for a type of liberal humanism (individualism, freedom, and peace) but quickly turned to a rejection of liberal humanism. The ideal of individual autonomy that underlies liberal humanism (the idea that people are free to make independent rational decisions that determine their own fate) was viewed as a mechanism for keeping the marginalized in their place by obscuring larger structural systems of inequality. In other words, it [free society] fooled people into believing they had more freedom and choice than societal structures actually allow. (p. 5)

In other words, Critical Race Theory sees free societies and the ideals that make them work—individualism, freedom, peace—as a kind of tacit conspiracy theory that we all participate in to keep racial minorities down. When its advocates accuse people of being "complicit in systems of racism," this is part of what they mean. Obviously, they would prefer that we do not have free societies and would rather arrange society as they see fit and make us all go along with their ideas.

4) Critical Race Theory only treats race issues as "socially constructed groups," so there are no individuals in Critical Race Theory.

Critical Race Theory isn't just against free societies and the individualism that enables them, but it also doesn't even believe individuals meaningfully exist at all! In Critical Race Theory, every person has to be understood in terms of the social groups they are said to inhabit, and these are determined by their identity, including race. (...)

Critical Race Theory forces people into these averages, though, and considers them primarily in terms of their group identity rather than their individual identity. This is part of why they use the word "folks" instead of "people"—it designates a social group.

Thus, in Critical Race Theory, the goal of ideally treating every person as an individual who is equal before the law and meant to be judged upon the contents of their character and merits of their work is considered a myth that keeps racial minorities down. Instead, it sees people according to their racial groups only. (...)

5) Critical Race Theory believes science, reason, and evidence are a "white" way of knowing and that storytelling and lived experience are a "black" alternative.

Remember above, where Delgado and Stefancic said that "normal science" is a part of the everyday, ordinary racism of our societies? That's because Critical Race Theory is not particularly friendly to science (...)

Since modern science was predominantly produced by white, Western men, Critical Race Theory therefore views science as a white and Western "way of knowing." Critical Race Theory therefore maintains that science encodes and perpetuates "white dominance" and thus isn't really fitting for black people who inhabit a (political) culture of Blackness.

(...)

Continuing the genuinely racist thinking that black people aren't suited to or served by science, Delgado and Stefancic say that storytelling about their "lived experience" is the primary mode by which black people and Critical Race Theory produce and advance knowledge. Importantly, these lived experiences are only considered valid if they agree with Critical Race Theory.  (...)

While stories can be informative, to create a position that science is a "way of knowing" for white, Western people (especially men) and storytelling is one more suited to racial minorities, Critical Race Theory is itself racist (against racial minorities) and cripples the people it claims to help. This happens in multiple ways, including by undermining their capacity for critical thinking, teaching them to see the world in an us-versus-them way that oppresses them, and associating them with harmful, negative stereotypes that rigorous methods are what white people, and not black people, use.

6) Critical Race Theory rejects all potential alternatives, like colorblindness, as forms of racism.

(...)

In fact, as you might guess now, it sees the idea of "colorblindness" as one of the most racist things possible because it hides the real racism from view. "While colorblindness sounds good in theory, in practice it is highly problematic," write Sensoy and DiAngelo (p. 108). (...)

While there is a point here—that being too colorblind can cause someone not to see racism at all, even when it is a real problem and especially when its influence is subtle (this is called "racism-blindness")—the remedy Critical Race Theory gives to this imperfection in the colorblind approach is to do exactly the opposite. Thus, racism has to be made relevant in every situation where racism is present, which is every situation, as we saw in point #1 above, and it has attached incredible amounts of social significance to race and how it factors into every interaction. That means you have to find and focus upon the "hidden" racism in your workplace, your school, your society, your neighborhood, your books, your food, your music, your hobbies, your faith, your church, your community, your friends, your relationships, and yourself (and everything else too) all the time, according to Critical Race Theory.

This has the opposite of the putatively intended effect. Although it does cause people to see some legitimate racism that they would have otherwise missed, it makes all of our relationships and social systems extremely fragile and tense, ready to explode over a highly divisive issue. (...)

7) Critical Race Theory acts like anyone who disagrees with it must do so for racist and white supremacist reasons, even if those people are black.

Following the "social construction" thesis discussed above in point #4, Critical Race Theory has outlined what the essential experience of each racial group is. It then judges individual people (especially of minority races) on how well they give testimonial to that experience—which is to say, they judge individual people based on how well they support Critical Race Theory. This makes it impossible to disagree with Critical Race Theory, even if you are black.

(...)

This phenomenon can be explained. As Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the New York Times Magazine 1619 Project (a Critical Race Theory historiography—not an article of history), tweeted (and then deleted) that there is "racially black" on the one hand, and "politically Black" on the other. Critical Race Theory is only interested in the identity politics associated with being "politically Black," and anyone who disagrees with Critical Race Theory—even if "racially black"—does not qualify. The common way to phrase this is that they are "not really Black." This means that in Critical Race Theory, diversity (which it calls for often) must be only skin deep. Everyone's politics must agree and must agree with Critical Race Theory.

This is obviously much worse a problem for white people or others who are said to have "racial privilege." There are more concepts in Critical Race Theory to deal specifically with how and why white people are racists for disagreeing with Critical Race Theory than perhaps any other idea. (...) All of these ideas implicate racially privileged people in racism anytime they disagree with Critical Race Theory.

88) Critical Race Theory cannot be satisfied.

We have already seen how Critical Race Theory cannot be disagreed with, even by black people. We have also seen how it rejects all alternatives and how it believes any success that it has comes down to "interest convergence." Because it rejects science, it cannot be falsified or proven wrong by evidence, and because it assumes racism is present and relevant to all situations and interactions, even the acceptance of Critical Race Theory must somehow also contain racism. Therefore, Critical Race Theory cannot be satisfied. It is, in this way, like a black hole. No matter how much you give to it, it cannot be filled and only gets stronger—and it will tear apart anything that gets too close to it.

(...)

And that's not all!

This is a grim but fair description of Critical Race Theory, and, what's worse, it's woefully incomplete. There are other horrible ideas at the very core of Critical Race Theory that fall in this same mold that we do not have time to list here. (...)

QuoteTeachers Compile List Of Parents Who Question Racial Curriculum, Plot War On Them

"Infiltrate... shut down their websites... expose these people publicly"

A group of current and former teachers and others in Loudoun County, Virginia, compiled a lengthy list of parents suspected of disagreeing with school system actions, including its teaching of controversial racial concepts — with a stated purpose in part to "infiltrate," use "hackers" to silence parents' communications, and "expose these people publicly."

Members of a 624-member private Facebook group called "Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County" named parents and plotted fundraising and other offline work. Some used pseudonyms, but The Daily Wire has identified them as a who's who of the affluent jurisdiction outside D.C., including school staff and elected officials.

The sheriff's criminal investigations division is reviewing the matter — but the group's activities might be no surprise to top law enforcement because the county's prosecutor, narrowly elected with the help of $845,000 in cash from George Soros, appears to be a member of the Facebook group.

(...)(...)

QuoteAs Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the New York Times Magazine 1619 Project (a Critical Race Theory historiography—not an article of history), tweeted (and then deleted) that there is "racially black" on the one hand, and "politically Black" on the other. Critical Race Theory is only interested in the identity politics associated with being "politically Black," and anyone who disagrees with Critical Race Theory—even if "racially black"—does not qualify. The common way to phrase this is that they are "not really Black." This means that in Critical Race Theory, diversity (which it calls for often) must be only skin deep. Everyone's politics must agree and must agree with Critical Race Theory.

Quote1/
"Sit with it"

This is the meme level version of the "pedagogy of discomfort."

The goal is to use discomfort/shame to destroy your moral authority and create emotional vulnerability they can exploit in order to manipulate you.

It's a disgusting and manipulative tactic.

2/
The point is to accuse people of bigotry (IE racism and sexism) and then force them to "sit with the uncomfortable emotions and body sensations that arise when encountering potentially difficult topics."

The academic literature in Social Justice says this explicitly:

3/
To fill you with as much shame/discomfort as possible, they try to prevent "turning away in fear and/or getting hijacked by intellectualizing"

In other words, you're not allowed to leave (turn away) or use your brain to think about what they tell you (intellectualizing)

4/
The pedagogy of discomfort weaponizes shame to make people feel vulnerable and guilty about participation in "systems of power" like "whiteness, racism, and sexism" and then makes them stew in their shame, confussion, and dissonance.

Once people feel bad and worthless...

5/
The Social Justice Activist offers the person a way to stop feeling horrible:

They tell you that you can stop being horrible if you convert to Social Justice by "becoming an anti-racist" and committing to "do the work."

It's every bit as manipulative and abusive as it sounds

6/
Most woke activists haven't actually read the literature on the pedagogy of discomfort.

They learn the tactic by seeing other woke activists use it, and learn that shaming people with accusations and telling them to "sit with it" is an effective way of manipulating people...

7/
The meme level version of this, which @R_Denhollander
is using, is to just blame people for horrible things that happen, shame them for "not caring," on insinuate they are responsible for something they didn't do, and then tell them to "sit with it."

It's disgusting...

8/
The always brilliant @ConceptualJames
did a thread on this where he explains how the "pedagogy of discomfort" is tied in to the rest of Social Justice ideology.

I highly recommend you read it here: (https://twitter.com/ConceptualJames/status/1128298479376326658 (https://twitter.com/ConceptualJames/status/1128298479376326658))

9/
This is a gross, ugly, manipulative, way of interacting with people.

Learn how to see it coming, call it out for what it is, and reject it whem they use it.

"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus"   -Romans 8:1

/fin

Quote(...)

Critical pedagogy is the application of critical theory to and in education. To help unravel what's contained in critical pedagogy—which is one of the most important concepts in Critical Social Justice—we should begin by noting that "pedagogy" means "theory of education." Critical pedagogy therefore includes at least two related things at once: applying critical theory to the theory of education itself and making education be about teaching critical theory. In the shortest summary, critical pedagogy is a school of thought that is about making education be about instruction in critical theory in an attempt to make the goal of education be to awaken a critical consciousness in students and teachers (and, perhaps, also to achieve equity in education, i.e., radical equality of outcomes—see also, wokeness).

(...)

Critical pedagogy seems to have been an instrumental part of how critical theory and, subsequently, (applied) postmodern Theory have managed to mainstream themselves. Colleges of education have been under the sway of this line of thought for some time, and more than a generation of students have now been raised and educated with critical pedagogy playing some, if not a significant, role in their education. Because of the desire, even need, to wed Theory to praxis within education, as education is simultaneously theoretical and applicable at once, critical pedagogy has been a very effective site for Theory to become more practical and applicable and for this point of view to be taught (as a truth) to students.

Critical pedagogy is, as one might expect, a very broad subject, not least in that it has been developing at least since the late 1970s and somewhat earlier and because it can apply to the teaching of anything. Theoretically now, it is very interested in a variety of topics, particularly what might be described as a "critical constructivist epistemology" (as Joe Kincheloe termed it) as well as means of overcoming resistance to a critical education. The first of these is interested in how systems of power influence how knowledge(s) are produced, legitimated, and understood (see also, hegemony), and the second is concerned with ways in which a critical consciousness can be taught, including by being forced upon people who aren't interested in it and who reject it. In this regard, many of the more concerning elements coming out of critical whiteness studies owe a great deal to the effort to apply that set of ideas within education.

Under the banner of the first of these objectives—critical constructivist epistemology—we have a strong adherence to social constructivism, which posits that the ways in which ideas and phenomena (especially knowledge, status as a knower, ways of knowing, etc.) are ultimately social constructions that need to be interrogated by means of the methods of critical theory. This strong adherence should not be mistaken for a recognition that there is relevance to understanding many phenomena in terms of how it can be regarded a social construction. It refers to something much stronger: that the most relevant feature of these phenomena is that they are socially constructed (which can be read as almost, but not quite, synonymous with "arbitrary," thus, "capable of being made different") and learned through socialization (see also, hegemony). A multitude of specialized concepts exists to Theorize these ideas, including epistemic injustice, testimonial injustice, hermeneutical injustice, epistemic oppression, and epistemic violence, to name a set of closely interrelated few.

This epistemological approach is then engaged in praxis through tools like "critical hope," which is kind of the opposite of hope (as it is the "hope" that comes from engaging critically with the despair induced by systemic power), and, ominously, the "pedagogy of discomfort." This latter idea posits that students must be made to feel discomfort and left to rest in that discomfort if they are to reckon with, confront, and eventually become genuinely critical of their privilege. This discomfort is, in fact, Theorized to be a necessary component in getting students to confront privilege, which is heavily Theorized as being naturally resistant to being confronted through critical methods (see also, internalized dominance, white comfort, white complicity, white equilibrium, white fragility, white innocence, white ignorance, white silence, white solidarity, white talk, white women's tears, colortalk, racial contract, aversive racism, racial stress, racial humility, racial stamina, active ignorance, pernicious ignorance, willful ignorance, and privilege-preserving epistemic pushback). The goal of this sadistic approach to educating is to induce a perverted form of epistemic friction that is necessary to open up space for new learning. These are the tools relevant to the second of these banners—overcoming students' resistance to a critical "education."

(...)

QuoteKriittinen pedagogiikka Suomessa

Suomessa kriittisestä pedagogiikasta on kirjoittanut muun muassa Juha Suoranta kirjassaan Radikaali kasvatus [4]. Kasvatus-lehden numero 1/2006 teemana oli kriittinen pedagogiikka. Aihetta tarkastellaan myös Tomi Kiilakosken, Tuukka Tomperin ja Marjo Vuorikosken toimittamassa teoksessa Kenen kasvatus? [5]. Aino Hannula on tutkinut väitöskirjassaan Tiedostaminen ja muutos Paulo Freiren ajattelussa [6] kriittisen pedagogiikan tunnetuimman edustajan filosofiaa. Sanna Ryynäsen väitöskirja Nuoria reunoilla. Sosiaalipedagoginen tutkimus rikollisuuden ja väkivallan keskellä elävien nuorten kasvun tukemisesta brasilialaisissa kansalaisjärjestöissä [7] hyödyntää Freiren ajattelua ja liittyy kriittiseen pedagogiikkaan.

Aihepiiristä on suomennettu Henry Giroux'lta ja Peter McLarenilta Tapio Aittolan ja Juha Suorannan toimittamana teos Kriittinen pedagogiikka, McLarenin teos Che Guevara, Paulo Freire ja vallankumouksen pedagogiikka, useita Theodor Adornon ja Max Horkheimerin tekstejä ja Paulo Freiren pääteos Sorrettujen pedagogiikka (1968/2005), jonka lopussa on laaja lähdeluettelo suomalaisesta Freire-kirjallisuudesta.[8] Lisäksi kriittisen pedagogiikan suomalaisia tutkimusavauksia on koottu kolmiosaiseen Kriittisen pedagogiikan kysymyksiä -kirjasarjaan [9], [10], [11].

Kriittistä pedagogiikkaa on Suomessa kehitelty myös suhteessa muihin osallistaviin tutkimusmenetelmiin ja kantaa ottaviin teoreettisiin ajattelutapoihin Juha Suorannan ja Sanna Ryynäsen kirjassa Taisteleva tutkimus (2014).

QuoteJuha Suoranta (s. 24. helmikuuta 1966 Tampere) on suomalainen tietokirjailija ja Tampereen yliopiston aikuiskasvatuksen professori vuodesta 2006[1].

QuoteTaisteleva tutkimus on ensimmäinen suomenkielinen perusteos "taistelevista" tutkimusmenetelmistä. Taisteleva tutkimus tarkoittaa kriittisesti kantaa ottavaa ja toiminnallista tutkimusta, jossa sosiaalista todellisuutta tarkastellaan ja maailmaa muutetaan yhdessä eri toimintakentillä työskentelevien ihmisten kanssa.

Ehdotamme kirjassamme, että yhteiskuntatieteilijän tehtäväksi on kirjoittamisen ja julkaisemisen lisäksi tullut osallistuminen ja yhteistoiminta. Kirjassa kootaan yhteen eri tutkimusperinteitä, kuten sorrettujen ja vapautuksen pedagogiikka, kriittinen psykologia, kriittinen ja osallistuva toimintatutkimus, julkinen sosiologia, työläistutkimus, sosiologinen aikalaisanalyysi ja yhdessä kulkemisen menetelmä.

Taisteleva tutkimus rohkaisee yhteiskuntatieteellisten alojen opiskelijoita vaikuttamaan yhteisiin asioihin ja tarttumaan toimeen. Se neuvoo kansalaistoimijoita tutkimuksen ja aktivismin yhdistämiseen ja antaa välineitä elämänolosuhteiden parantamiseksi.

"Taisteleva tutkimus on ilman muuta uraauurtava teos aiheesta, josta ei suomeksi ole aikaisemmin näin perusteellisesti kirjoitettu!"
>> Pentti Stranius, Kansan Uutiset, Verkkolehti 11.7.2014

QuoteTutkija aktiivisena toimijana

Juha Suorannan ja Sanna Ryynäsen Taisteleva tutkimus on sopivaa kesälukemista, sillä tietokirjaksi se on harvinaisen kansantajuinen. Tekijät eivät ole kuivanasiallisia kammiotutkijoita, vaan osallistuvia toimijoita, jotka osaavat innostaa oppilaitaan.

Suoranta (s. 1966) on tunnettu laadullisten tutkimusmenetelmien erittelijä ja vaihtoehtoisten mallien etsijä Tampereen yliopistosta. Ryynänen (s. 1972) on asunut, tutkinut ja osallistunut kansalaistoimintaan muun muassa Brasiliassa. (...)

Pääpaino on viime vuosikymmenissä ja kirjoittajat kantavat suurta huolta siitä, kuinka vähän akateeminen maailma oikeasti osallistuu tutkimuksissaan hätää kärsivien ja sorrettujen asialle. Yliopistot ovat unohtaneet kuuluisan "kolmannen tehtävänsä", vaikuttamisen yhteiskuntaan. Keskeinen käsite on praksis. Se edellyttää tutkijalta teorian ja käytännön yhteenliittämistä, osallistumista, aktivismia. Maailman selittäminen ei riitä. On oltava niiden puolella, jotka haluavat pois "sorron yöstä".

Kirjan toisessa osassa esitellään käytäntöjä, liikkeitä, tutkimusmalleja. Sellaiset termit kuten vapautuksen sosiologia ja teologia, kriittinen etnografia, toimintatutkimus, uusi työläistutkimus, anarkistinen metodologia, feministinen tutkimus, ekologinen aktivismi, militanttitutkimus tulevat näkyviksi ja monin tavoin analysoiduiksi myös kriittisessä mielessä. Kolmannessa osassa paneudutaan siihen mitä on tehtävä ja kuinka opitaan "taistelevaksi tutkijaksi".

(...)

QuoteYhteiskunnassa vallitsevaan eläinkäsitykseen ja eläinsuhteeseen liittyen tutkimustuloksissa nousi esiin ihmiskeskeisyys ja lajisorto. Vallitseva eläinkäsitys korostaa eläinten erilaisuutta ja alemmuutta ihmiseen verrattuna. Vallitseva eläinsuhde on dualistinen, hierarkkinen, riistävä, sortava, hallitseva, toiseuttava ja välineellinen.

Eläinten asemaa tuotetaan ja ylläpidetään yhteiskunnassa monenlaisilla mekanismeilla, joita ovat talousjärjestelmä, näkymättömyys, etääntyminen, tietämättömyys, hegemonia, normalisointi, sosiaalinen konstruointi ja diskurssit. Tutkimustulosten mukaan eläimiä ei yleensä oteta huomioon kasvatuksen kontekstissa. Kasvatus uusintaa eläinten asemaa, kun se normalisoi vallitsevan eläinkäsityksen ja eläinsuhteen.

Eläinten vapautuminen sorrosta on tärkeää paitsi eläinten itsensä, myös ihmisten ja luonnon vuoksi. Eläinten vapautuminen vaatii aivan uudenlaista eläinkäsitystä ja eläinsuhdetta. Tutkimustulosten perusteella kasvatuksella on tärkeä rooli kulttuurin uudistamisessa, muutoksen mahdollistamisessa ja eläinten vapautumisessa.

Quote

Appalling BBC Broadcast : We want to kill whitey, but not today

https://gab.com/a/posts/105916981123226442

QuoteTo Boldly Go: Critical Animal Studies (CAS), the Final Frontier

An article from this summer in Psychology Today by Katherine Compitus demonstrates how far critical social theories can take us if fully imbibed. In the article, Compitus attacks "speciesism," which is "the concept that one species (usually human) considers themselves superior to other species." No species is superior, just different, says Compitus. Instead, she prefers to relegate all species to the lowest common denominator: "We are all living beings."

Compitus is horrified that some anachronistically minded people haven't yet bought into this—the barbarians, if you can believe it, still use oppressive words like "master" and "owner" to "describe their superior position in relation to their pets." This offends Compitus on principle because she has sanitized her memory of any real distinction between humans and other animals. But speciesism is all the more terrible because "Recent studies in the intersectionality of oppressed people and animals have shown how similarly marginalized humans are treated to non-human animals." For example, there are "similarities between the way women are oppressed by society and how animals are dismissed, bullied, and oppressed by society."

Speciesism is also a problem because it, and the "oppressive language" endemic to it, is tantamount to anti-black racism. Compitus looks to Benedicte Boisseron's Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question (2018) which employs Critical Race Theory (CRT) to analyze how both people of color and "non-human animals" are marginalized and oppressed, and how (per intersectionality) the oppression of one by the dominant class (in this case, white humans) reinforces and compounds the oppression of the other and adversely affects the relationship between the two groups. (We will return to Boisseron later.)

To combat the racist implications of our language, and the "dominance theory" embedded therein, Compitus advises speaking of "including" the dog, not "using" it. We don't own dogs; we are their "guardians," not "masters." We don't discipline or "correct" or punish animals; that's bullying.

(...)(...)

CAS presents a truly frightening prospect: the elimination of the most basic foundation of Western civilization, the priority and unique status of human beings. The result is the relegation of all "living beings" to animal status. Ironically, where CAS theorists think that the elimination of species distinctions will eliminate the means of oppression, it will, in fact, almost certainly make it easier to dehumanize whoever the marginalized group happens to be. If we are all relegated to the lowest common denominator then whatever can be done to an amoeba can be done to a human person. Any argument otherwise would be arbitrary and capricious.

CAS has followed the same trend in the academy as other critical social theories: slowly transitioning from a niche discipline to being regularly featured on course schedules to making appearances in mainstream publications.[46] The sheer absurdity of the discipline and its core assumptions should not induce us to sleep on it, as they say. We must recognize that if half-baked ideas like "white fragility" can so easily and quickly capture the public discourse then so too can ideas like "speciesism." The same lazy logic and resentful worldview animates—to use a word no doubt offensive to CAS scholars—both.

The New York Times article quoted above relays arguments based on a human-centric standard. That is, if certain non-human animals use language and even possess an analog to our conception of morality, then is a distinction really as stark as we imagine? That was 2012. Things have progressed since. Now, the cutting-edge scholars detest such human-centric arguments. The human-animal binary is socially constructed and should be dismantled because it is oppressive, full stop. To allow some animals to qualify for legal rights or a diminished form of personhood only perpetuates the liberal status quo that centers humans and elevates rationality.

This signals a big shift in only a few years. Presumably, CAS theorists were making such arguments all along. The difference is that they are now quite comfortable openly expressing them to the public, and even more so in college classrooms. This development is even scarier when we survey the gullibility of the media and intellectual class, at the moment, for anything having to do with race. The connection made between the speciesist binary and racism makes CAS ripe for more mainstream reception. Look for it soon at a course list, think piece, and protest event near you! If CAS is fully imbibed—not an unlikely prospect given what we've seen so far—we will move rapidly from "four legs good, two legs better" to "four legs good, two legs just the same," or, if you like, "all animals are equal, some are more equal than others," to "all animals are equal, and we are all just animals." We are all farm animals now.

Were the Grievance Studies team to attempt another hoax today they might have a more difficult time. The CAS literature is almost beyond parody. A specious connection between dog parks, misogyny, and rape culture is one that a publication like the Journal for Critical Animal Studies would almost certainly accept. The only question would be whether "Helen Wilson" could come up with a proposal that was radical enough.

QuoteRekola, Hilkka – Vuorikoski, Marjo. 2006. FEMINISTINEN PEDAGOGIIKKA RAJOJEN
YLITTÄJÄNÄ. Kasvatus 37 (1) 16–25.

Artikkelissa tarkastellaan bell hooksin kehittelemän feministisen pedagogiikan ideoita.
Hooksin pedagogiikkaa voi luonnehtia kriittisen pedagogiikan suuntaukseen kuuluvaksi
vapauttavaksi koulutustavaksi, jolla pyritään horjuttamaan vallitsevia ajattelu- ja määrittelytapoja,
totuttuja rajoja ja valtasuhteita. Hooksin kehittelemässä opetuksellisessa
lähestymistavassa, osallistavassa pedagogiikassa, hierarkkisia valtasuhteita puretaan luomalla
tasa-arvoinen oppimisyhteisö. Osallistujat – niin opettajat kuin oppijatkin – nähdään
aktiivisina toimijoina ja kokonaisina ihmisinä tunteineen ja kehoineen. Osallistavan
pedagogiikan anti kriittiselle pedagogiikalle on merkittävä: bell hooks ei jää yleisten
tavoitelausumien esittämiseen, vaan hän kehittelee konkreettisia opetuskäytäntöjä kriittisen
teorian tavoitteiden saavuttamiseksi.

QuoteFeministinen ja kriittinen pedagogiikka
ovat sateenvarjokäsitteitä, joiden alle kuuluu
erilaisista teoreettisista perustoista ammentavia
lähestymistapoja koulutuksen ja opetuksen
kehittämiseksi tasa-arvoisempaan
suuntaan. Molemmissa suuntauksissa lähtökohtana
on, että kasvatus ja koulutus tuottavat paitsi tietoa myös poliittisen ja ideologisen
subjektiuden. Muita yhteisiä tekijöitä ovat
muun muassa eettisten kysymysten korostuminen,
pyrkimys poikkitieteelliseen tietoon,
näkemys tiedon historiallisuudesta sekä yhteiskunnallisen
tiedostamisen lisääminen.
Feministisen ja kriittisen pedagogiikan
pitkälti yhdenmukaiset lähtökohtaoletukset
eriytyvät monien feministipedagogien mielestä
sukupuolten tasa-arvoa koskevissa kysymyksissä.
Feministisen pedagogiikan edustajat
katsovat, että kriittinen pedagogiikka ei ota
riittävästi huomioon naisnäkökulmaa. Feministipedagogit
painottavat naisten aseman
parantamista, tiedon uudelleenarviointia feminististen
teorioiden pohjalta sekä feminististen
teorioiden soveltamista kasvatustieteessä
ja pedagogisissa käytännöissä.

QuoteFeministiseen pedagogiikkaan kuuluu
erilaisista teoreettisista perustoista ammentavia
lähestymistapoja (ks. Vuorikoski 2005, 48–
49). Niiden keskeisiä avaintermejä ovat empowerment
(valtauttaminen) ja voicing (äänen
antaminen). Ne kuvaavat pedagogisia ratkaisuja,
joilla valtaa pyritään opetustilanteissa jakamaan.
Valtauttamisen käsitteellä viitataan
opiskelijoiden oman olemassaolon oikeuden
tunnustamiseen ja voimistamiseen. Äänen
antaminen tarkoittaa opiskelijoiden itsetiedostuksen
lisäämistä ja itseilmaisun tukemista.
Perusajatuksena on autoritaarisen opetuksen
mallin murtaminen sellaisella pedagogiikalla,
joka antaa tilaa opiskelijoiden omille kokemuksille
ja vahvistaa näin heidän subjektiuttaan.

QuoteBell hooksin kehittelemä opetuksellinen
lähestymistapa osallistava pedagogiikka (engaged
pedagogy) tarkoittaa, että opetus on opettajan
ja oppijoiden yhteinen projekti.

QuoteFeministisen pedagogiikan ABC — Opas ohjaajille ja opettajille

Feministisen pedagogiikan ABC on yleistajuinen tietokirja, joka on suunnattu opettajille ja ohjaajille erilaisissa oppimisen ympäristöissä. Kirja antaa esimerkkejä siitä, miten monesti haastavilta tuntuvia sukupuolta, seksismiä ja rasismia eli vallankäytön muotoja koskevia teemoja voidaan sisällyttää opetukseen rakentavalla tavalla.

Opetuksessa tarvitaan keinoja käsitellä sukupuolen moninaisuutta, hierarkkisoivia eroja ja antirasistisia käytänteitä. Sukupuolen moninaisuuden ja risteävien erojen ymmärtäminen sekä normikriittisyys ja antirasismi pedagogisena asenteena kytkeytyvät kaikki feministisen pedagogiikan käytäntöihin. Kirja toimii myös inspiraation lähteenä ja johdatuksena erilaisiin toiminnallisiin menetelmiin sekä vinkkikirjana kokeneillekin opettajille.

Kirja koostuu yleistajuisista tietokirjoituksista, joissa esitellään feministisen pedagogiikan juuria ja keskeisiä ajatuksia, feministisen pedagogiikan historiaa Suomessa sekä intersektionaalisuutta opetuksessa. (...)

QuoteMiksi meidän kaikkien pitäisi olla feministisiä pedagogeja

Suomessa koulutusjärjestelmän ja koko yhteiskunnan läpäissyt tasa-arvoisuuden illuusio on
vaikeuttanut keskustelua sukupuolen, yhteiskuntaluokan ja etnisen taustan vaikutuksesta
opettamiseen ja oppimiseen. (...)

QuoteFeministisen pedagogiikan ABC – Opas ohjaajille ja opettajille onkin kaivattu, otteeltaan
ja visuaaliselta ilmeeltään kutsuva käsikirja, jonka tarjoamilla näkökulmilla ja työkaluilla
voimme tarkastella ympärillämme olevia eroja. Kirja on kokoelmateos ja se ovat toimittaneet
kokeneet tutkija-opettajat Anu Laukkanen, Sari Miettinen, Aino-Maija Elonheimo,
Hanna Ojala ja Tuija Saresma. He ovat myös sukupuolentutkimusverkosto Hilman
keskeisiä hahmoja sekä antaneet feministisen pedagogiikan opetusta verkoston kautta. (...)

QuoteTeoksen nimi Feministisen pedagogiikan ABC saattaa ohjata ajattelemaan "vain" naisten
ja tyttöjen oikeuksia. Feministinen pedagogiikka ei kuitenkaan ole pelkästään sukupuolen
huomioimista opetuksessa ja yhteiskunnassa tai sukupuolten välisten erojen korostamista.
Sen sijaan feministinen pedagogiikka pyrkii olemaan eroille herkkää pedagogiikkaa.
Kyse ei ole vain naiserityisten kysymysten havaitsemisesta vaan myös sukupuolen moninaisuuden,
seksuaalisuuden, värin, iän, luokan, ruumiin muodon ja kyvykkyyden perusteella
muodostuvien erojen tiedostamisesta.

QuoteTeos on rakenteeltaan selkeä, sisällöltään monipuolinen ja ilmavasti taitettu, mikä tekee
lukukokemuksesta miellyttävän. Teos tarjoaa lyhyitä käsitteellisteoreettisia katsauksia
sukupuolentutkimuksen peruskäsitteisiin ja feminismin perusteemoihin: mitä on esimerkiksi
sukupuolisensitiivisyys, yhteiskuntaluokka, ableismi tai queer. Kirja koostuu taustoituksesta,
yleistajuisista tietokirjoituksista (esim. "antirasistinen koulu"), harjoituksista ja
menetelmäkuvauksista sekä lyhyistä tietoiskuista. Taustoituksen ja tietoiskujen lisäksi teoksessa
on paljon erilaisia, mainiota työkaluja ja ideoita, joita voi käyttää opetuksessa (esim.
etuoikeuskävely). Lopusta löytyy myös sanasto.

Tietokirjoituksissa käydään läpi feministisen pedagogiikan taustaa: teoreettisen perustan
nähdään nivoutuvan Paulo Freiren ajatteluun ja sosiaalista oikeudenmukaisuutta tavoittelevaan
kriittiseen pedagogiikkaan. Feministiaktivisti bell hooks kehitti vapauttavan kasvatuksen
ajatusta (teaching to transgress) ja yhdisti kriittiseen pedagogiikkaan postkolonialistisen
feminismin ajatuksia sukupuolittamisesta ja rodullistamisesta. Vaikka taustoitus on kirjassa
todella lyhyt, se avaa, miten feministisessä pedagogiikassa korostuvat dialoginen opetus
ja yhdessä tietämiseen pyrkivä tapa, jotka purkavat opettajan ja oppilaan välistä hierarkiaa
ja tallentavan opetuksen (banking education) mallia. Feministisen pedagogiikan keskeiseksi
tavoitteeksi onkin muotoiltu "pyrkimys rohkaista oppijaa ajattelemaan itse ja
kriittisesti ja tuottaa tietoa yhdessä opettajan ja toisten oppijoiden kesken."

QuoteVaikka teos tavoitteidensa mukaisesti soveltuu hyvin laajalle kirjolle erilaisia pedagogeja,
korkeakoulun lisäksi myös peruskoulu ja aktivismi mukaan lukien, se tarjoaa yllättävän
vähän työkaluja siihen, miten olla feministinen pedagogi "kovilla aloilla" kuten matematiikan,
luonnontieteiden ja terveystieteiden parissa. Riittääkö moninaisten erojen tiedostaminen
vai onko se vasta ensimmäinen askel? Miten tiedostaminen viedään käytäntöön ja esimerkiksi
matematiikan, biologian tai kvantitatiivisten menetelmien opetukseen korkeakouluissa?

Kirja ei myöskään käsittele perinteistä ammattialojen horisontaalista ja vertikaalista
segregaatiota ja siitä seuraavia koulutuksen ja työelämän tasa-arvokysymyksiä, esimerkiksi
miksi tytöt päätyvät useammin opiskelemaan hoiva- ja kasvatusaloille ja pojat teknisille
aloille ja johtaviin tehtäviin. Kirjan tietoiskut yhteiskuntaluokasta, ableismista tai queerista
ovat erittäin tarpeellisia kaikille aloille ja eri oppilaitoksissa työskenteleville, mutta lisäksi
tarvitaan myös kättä pidempää ja vertaistukea. Jäämme siis odottamaan kirjan kakkososaa!

QuoteArmi Mustosmäki on tutkijatohtori yhteiskuntatieteiden tiedekunnassa, sukupuolentutkimuksen
oppiaineessa Tampereen yliopistossa.

QuoteKolmen viime vuoden aikana olen uudelleen haastanut joitakin sukupuolentutkimuksessa esitettyjä ajatuksia ja yleisemmin myös feminististä retoriikkaa (täällä, täällä, täällä, täällä ja täällä). Kritisoimieni ajatusten esittäjät ovat tällä kertaa kieltäytyneet keskustelemasta, kenties jopa kuuntelemasta. En usko, että he ovat yli-itsevarmoja tai ylenkatsovat kirjallista keskustelua. Altistuminen akateemiselle feminismille tai sukupuolentutkijaksi identifioituminen eivät voi viedä kykyä mielipiteenvaihtoon. Jostakin muusta on kyse. Ehkä perusteluni ovat vastaansanomattomia? Ehkä perusteluni on esitetty väärällä tavalla?

QuotePS. Kokonaisuutena teos saattaa olla rönsyilevin lukemani tietokirja. Eräs luku kertoo esimerkiksi QTF-itsepuolustuksesta (QTF=queer- ja transfeministinen). Siitä löytyy myös kirjan yllättävin kommentti:

    S. 186: QTF-itsepuolustus on parhaimmillaan osa sellaista feminististä politiikkaa, jossa ymmärretään kapitalistisen yhteiskunnan seuraukset eri ihmisryhmille. Se sisältää laajemman poliittisen analyysin ja sen pyrkimyksenä on vankiloiden lakkauttaminen.

QuoteOlemme toimittamassa Feministinen pedagogiikka – murrokset ja utopiat –kirjaa (työnimi), joka on itsenäinen jatko-osa vuonna 2018 ilmestyneelle suuren suosion saaneelle teokselle Feministisen pedagogiikan ABC– opas ohjaajille ja opettajille.

Kirja jatkaa keskusteluja kriittisestä pedagogiikasta, sukupuolesta ja intersektionaalisuudesta opetuksessa ja ohjauksessa sekä nostaa esille pedagogiikassa ja opetusympäristöissä tapahtuneita muutoksia.

Kirjassa käsitellään feministisen pedagogiikan mahdollistamia muutoksia opetuksessa ja ohjauksessa sekä jaetaan hyviä käytäntöjä. Lisäksi mietitään, mitä ovat ne muutokset ja murrokset, jopa utopiat, jotka ovat vasta tuloillaan ja joiden haluaisimme tapahtuvan, ja kysytään, mitä toimintamahdollisuuksia ja uudenlaisia toiminnan tiloja ne avaavat.

Feministinen pedagogiikka – murrokset ja utopiat –kirja on tarkoitettu käytettäväksi opetuksen ja ohjauksen eri konteksteissa aina peruskoulusta yliopistoon. Haemme kirjaan seuraavanlaisia tekstejä:

1)teoriakeskeisiä, mutta yleistajuisia tietotekstejä
2) konkreettisia ja kokeiltuja feministisen pedagogiikan käytäntöjä ja kokemuksien kuvauksia
3) opettamisen ja ohjaamisen tulevaisuutta hahmottelevia utopioita.

Ajankohtaisia ja kirjassa käsiteltäviä aiheita ja teemoja ovat esimerkiksi sukupuolen moninaisuus, saavutettavuus, rodullistaminen ja rasismi, etäpedagogiikka ja oppilaitosten toiminnan kehittäminen tasa-arvo- ja yhdenvertaisuusnäkökulmasta.

Quote(...)

Feministinen pedagogiikka on:
1) Itseriittoista relativismia

Aloitetaan kirjan takakannesta. Siinä kysytään: "Millaisia tietoon ja valtaan liittyviä seurauksia on sillä, että kaikkien opiskelijoiden ja opettajien oletetaan olevan heteroja, keskiluokkaisia tai valkoisia?" Kysymys ei lupaa hyvää. Määrittelemättömien yleistysten sijaan kannattaisi kysyä, kuka olettaa keneltäkin heteroseksuaalisuutta tai keskiluokkaisuutta. Sitten pitäisi selvittää – mieluiten kokeellisesti – miksi kyseiset tahot sitä tekevät. Ennen kuin on todennettu seikan olemassaolo ja selvitetty sen luonnetta, on tuskin mieltä arvioida seikan aiheuttamia vaikutuksia. Tartuin aiheeseen kaikesta huolimatta uteliaalla ja avoimella mielellä. Takakannen tarkoituskin on lähinnä herättää kiinnostusta. Akateemisen feminismin on myös täytynyt kehittyä sen jälkeen, kun julkaisin Jussi K. Niemelän kanssa naistutkimusta kritisoivan pamflettimme (Niemelä & Tammisalo 2006). Ainakin nimensä ala on vaihtanut sukupuolentutkimukseksi.

   Paljastui kuitenkin, että relativismi on vallitseva opinkappale myös feministisessä pedagogiikassa. Tämä tuotiin ilmi ensimmäisten lauseiden joukossa: "Kuten tieto itsessään, myöskään tavat käsitellä tätä tietoa – eli opettaa ja oppia – eivät ole neutraaleja" (s. 7, korostus lisätty). Optimismini karisi heti alussa. Missään vaiheessa ei perusteltu väitettä, että tieto ei voi olla neutraalia. Sen sijaan tiedon suhteellisuutta, totuusrelativismia ja objektiivisuuden hyljeksimistä mainosteltiin eri muodoissa pitkin kirjaa. Tiedossa ja opettamisessa on teoksen mukaan kyse vain "diskursseista" ja "subjektiuksien rakentamisesta". Tässä jokunen esimerkki:

    Rationaalinen käsitys tiedosta sulkee ulkopuolelleen kokemuksellisen tiedon ja ylläpitää kahtiajakautunutta ajattelua oikeasta faktatiedosta ja vähemmän oikeasta kokemuksellisesta tiedosta (s. 19). Tavoitteena on auttaa opiskelijoita tunnistamaan 'virallisen' tulkinnan rinnalla olevia muita tulkintoja, ja sitä kautta kysymään, keiden diskurssit ovat saaneet totuuden aseman (s. 30–31). ...tarvitaan pedagogiikkaa, joka aktivoi opiskelijat yhteiskunnan ja kulttuurin muuttamiseen ja raivaa tilaa uudenlaisen subjektiuden rakentamiseen... (s. 42). Koska tieto rakentuu sosiaalisesti, ei tietämistä voi erottaa arvoista ja opettamista poliittisuudesta (s. 59). Juuri objektiivisuuden vaatimus voidaan nähdä tiedeyhteisölle ominaisena sukupuolen piilottamisen lajina, kun universaalitietoa on tuotettu miesten laatimilla pelisäännöillä (s. 82). ...feministisessä tutkimusyhteisössä korostetaan erityisesti, että yksittäinen tutkija ei ole oikeassa tai väärässä, vaan 'oikeassa' tai 'väärässä' on yhteisö sikäli kuin ilmaisuja oikeassa tai väärässä oleminen ylipäätään on järkevä käyttää (s. 97).

Mitä näihin voi sanoa? On epäilemättä kokemuksellista tietoa, joka eroaa faktatiedosta. Ja on totta, että miehiä on ollut huomattavasti enemmän laatimassa tieteen pelisääntöjä. Yksilöllisten kokemusten erilaisuus tai ensimmäisten tieteilijöiden sukupuoli eivät kuitenkaan tarkoita, että kaikki näkemykset olisivat tiedollisessa mielessä yhtä päteviä. Yksi tieteen tehtävistä on nimenomaan tehdä ero todisteisiin nojaavan tiedon ja muunlaisen tietämisen välille.

(...) Yleisemmin periaate voisi kuulua: aineiston tuottamiseen ei tule käyttää oletusta, joka pitäisi todistaa saman aineiston perusteella.

   Tieteessä pyritään kaikin tavoin välttämään tiedollista saastumista. Mittalaitteet tai tutkijoiden omaksumat teoriat eivät saa olla saatujen tutkimustulosten tuottajia. Oikea tutkija ei myöskään sitoudu teoriaan, varsinkaan teoriaan, jota ei voida periaatteessakaan kumota. Tutkijan on siis oltava aina valmis muuttamaan näkemystään uusien todisteiden edessä. Tämä ei ole tilanne feministisessä pedagogiikassa, jossa esimerkiksi "katsotaan yleisesti, ettei sukupuolentutkimusta voi opettaa teknisenä tietona esimerkiksi määrittelemällä käsitteitä irrallaan feministisestä tietokäsityksestä" (s. 49). Ala siis myöntää sitoutuneensa jo etukäteen tiettyyn sukupuoli-ideologiaan/-politiikkaan ja feministiseen tietokäsitykseen. Ja jos et ole näitä omaksunut, et luultavasti myöskään ole pätevä arvioimaan alalla esitettyjä väitteitä.

   Näin feministinen pedagogiikka muistuttaa kumoutumatonta psykoanalyyttista torjuntateoriaa. (...) Objektiivisuuden, testattavuuden ja kumoutuvuuden vaatimushan on vain patriarkaatin ylläpitämä aataminaikainen jäänne.

   Feministisen pedagogiikan itseriittoinen ja relativistinen tietokäsitys näkyy myös käytännön opetustavoissa. Muiden alojen luentosarjojen alussa luennoija usein kertoo, millaisten asiakokonaisuuksien hallintaa opiskelijalta vaaditaan. Feministisessä pedagogiikassa ei menetellä näin:

    Erojen pedagogiikassa onkin lähdetty etsimään konkreettisia keinoja, joilla opetustilanteita yliopistoissa voisi järjestää niin, että ne toimisivat otollisina puitteina toisin tietämisen halun heräämiselle. Keskeistä näissä keskusteluissa on ollut, toisilleen ristiriitaisiltakin kuulostavat, käytännöt: turvallisen ilmapiirin luominen ja etäännytetty tieto sekä hämmennyksen ja epävarmuuden hyväksi käyttäminen (s. 30, kursivointi lisätty).


Tämä muistuttaa aivopesua tai uskonlahkon toimintaa. Opettajan tulee toki käyttää mahdollisimman toimivia konsteja, jotta opiskelijan mielenkiinto aihetta kohtaan herää. Mutta keinot ovat sopimattomia yliopistoon, jos opiskelija vain päätyy hämmentyneenä "tietämään toisin" eli hylkäämään tieteelle olennaisen pyrkimyksen objektiivisuuteen tai testattavuuteen. Kumoutumaton teoria on valmis, kun todetaan, että jos et omaksu hämmennystä, olet torjunnan vallassa: "Kielteisiksi määriteltyjä tunteita, kuten hämmennystä, epävarmuutta ja epäonnistumista ei ole helppo 'myydä' opiskelijoille, jotka ovat oppineet pitämään hyvää itsetuntoa keskeisenä menestystekijänä ja odottavat miellyttävää palautetta ja kiitosta" (s. 56). Opiskelijat saattavat kirjan mukaan myös vastustaa opetusta, "koska he haluavat säästää itseään epäoikeudenmukaisuuden näkemiseltä ja pyrkivät samalla säilyttämään ihanteellisen naiivin käsityksen yhteiskunnallisesta tasa-arvosta" (s. 197). Tällaiset yleistykset ja alentava psykologisointi eivät toki (ainakaan vielä) ole kasvatustieteiden valtavirtaa.

Quote2) Sanataidetta ja politiikkaa

Kielellisestä lahjattomuudesta alan harjoittajia ei voida moittia. Harmillista vain on, että se on johtanut tieteellistä ajattelua haittaavaan sanataiteiluun. Sinänsä sujuvan poljennon alta paljastuu joukko selviöitä ja epäselvää päättelyä. Tavoite ei ole tieteellinen selittäminen, vaan jonkinlainen selitteleminen. Esimerkkejä:

(...) Feministisessä pedagogiikassa ajatellaan, ettei suhde tiedon ja tietämättömyyden välillä ole vastakohtainen, vaan jonkin tietäminen on mahdollista jonkin toisen pois sulkemisen avulla... 'Normaaliksi' määritellyt samastumiskohteet – valkoinen, hetero, keskiluokkainen länsimaisuus – asettuvat helposti samuudeksi ja jokapäiväiseksi itsestäänselvyydeksi eivätkä tarjoa samastumiskohteita toiseutetuille subjektiuksille... Queer-pedagogiikka haastaa outouttamaan opetuksen normaalistavat käytännöt paranoidisella ja reparatiivisella lukutavalla (s. 60–61). Koska queer ei viittaa olotilaan saati identiteettiin, se verbinä ilmaisee jatkuvaa edestakaisen prosessia omien tietämisen rajojen tunnistamiseksi ja tunnustamiseksi (s. 64). Naiset eivät ole yliopistoissa perinteisesti toimineet rakenteellisen vallan ytimessä ja heidän ristiriitaisen positionsa voidaan nähdä mahdollistavan sääntöjä rikkovan ja vikuroivan mikropoliittisen toimijuuden (s. 82). Kuinka rikkumaton on se subjektipositio, jota opettajana tarjoamme heijastuspintana opiskelijoille? Millaisilla pedagogisilla valinnoilla tulemme mahdollisesti uusintaneeksi normalisoituja ja stereotyyppisen vakaita oletuksia sukupuolten ja seksuaalisuuksien jatkumoista? Kuinka opettajina voisimme toistaa oletettuja jatkumoja toisin, horjuttaen niiden 'luonnollisuutta', tehden näkyväksi niiden haurautta ja kyseenalaistaen niiden varassa myönnettyjä etuoikeuksia? (s. 127) Etsin koko ajan keinoja ja toimintatapoja ymmärtää ja kuvata toiseuttamisen eläviä mekanismeja itsessäni ja kulttuurissamme sekä jakaa oivaltamaani niin, että se lihallistuisi vuorovaikutuksessa (s. 248).

Oma suosikkini on lausunto kirjan lopusta:

    Parhaimmillaan tunteiden jakaminen helpottaa ja auttaa huomaamaan, että oma riittämättömyys ja jopa häpeä omasta tyhmyydestä eivät olekaan yksittäisiä ominaisuuksia, vaan akateemisen ympäristön ruokkimia yleisesti koettuja tunnetiloja. Henkilökohtainen on poliittista (s. 256).


Tarkistakaa itse: asiayhteydessään ajatukset ovat kenties vielä epämääräisempiä ja hullunkurisempia.

(...)

   Oman määritelmänsä mukaan feministinen pedagogiikka on "feministisen tutkimuksen informoimaa opettamiseen ja ohjaamiseen liittyvää ymmärrystä, opettamisen tapoja ja oppimistilanteiden käytäntöjä" (s. 17). Määritelmä vaikuttaa selvältä, mutta se ei ole sitä. Missään ei esimerkiksi kerrota, mitä feministisellä tutkimuksella tarkoitetaan. Feminismejähän tunnetusti on monenlaisia. Määritelmä jatkuu: "Feministisen pedagogiikan keskiössä ovat kysymykset sukupuolesta ja tiedon poliittisuudesta sekä näkemykset koulutuksen sukupuolistavista ja sukupuolittavista käytännöistä". Alalla myös "vaaditaan tunnistamaan sukupuoli ja seksuaalisuus osana tiedon rakennetta ja pedagogista toimintaa" (s. 63). (...)

   Mukana on siis koko ajan neljä ongelmaa: 1) etukäteen sitoutuminen tietynlaiseen politiikkaan ja toimintaan sekä tietynlaisiin tutkimustuloksiin, 2) ajatus, että ei voi olla objektiivista, epärelativistista, sukupuoletonta tai epäpoliittista tietoa (tai ainakaan niihin ei kannata tai tarvitse pyrkiä), 3) viholliskuva, että jossakin on määrittelemättömiä tahoja, jotka jollakin määrittelemättömällä tavalla jostakin epämääräisestä syystä konstruoivat sukupuolia ja heteroseksuaaleja ja 4) epätarkat ja lennokkaat termit ja käsitteet sekä yleinen epäempiirisyys; alalla ei esitetä havaintojen avulla kumottavissa tai todennettavissa olevia seikkoja. Ylimääräinen ongelma on se, että feministisellä pedagogiikalla ei ole yhteyksiä psykologiaan tai biologiaan, vaikka ne ovat esittäneet perusteltuja vastauksia vaikkapa siihen, miksi naiset ja miehet hakeutuvat eri aloille ja eri tehtäviin. (Yleisemmällä tasolla sukupuolentutkijoiden soisi tuntevan teorioita siitä, miksi ylipäätään on sukupuolia.)

   Osa alan harjoittajista tuntuu näkevän itsensä harvinaisina sankarittarina, jotka uskaltavat vastustaa ja kyseenalaistaa länsimaisen tieteen "yleistäviä käsityksiä" (s. 62). He eivät ota huomioon, että kaikenlainen kyseenalaistaminen on ollut olennainen osa tiedettä alusta alkaen, jo määritelmällisesti. Kriittisyys on osa tiedettä ja tieteenfilosofiaa, eikä ole eikä voi olla erikseen feminististä tieteenfilosofiaa. Miten kiihkeästi tutkija uskookaan teorioihinsa, ne eivät tiedeyhteisön silmissä ole minkään arvoisia ennen kuin teoriat ovat läpäisseet kaikki mahdolliset testit, ei vain feministisiä testejä. Vastaväite voisi kuulua: kuka määrää, mitkä testit ovat oikeita? Valtavirtatiedehän ei ole kelvannut akateemiselle feminismille. Miksi teorioiden ei tarvitsisi läpäistä feministisiä testejä? Syy on yksinkertainen: kyseisen opinkappaleen mukaan testien läpäisy, siis objektiivisuus, testattavuus ja falsifioitavuus eivät ole tärkeitä. Tämänkaltaiset kaksoisstandardit, jossa omalle teorialle annetaan etuajo-oikeus, ovat tyypillistä politiikassa ja uskonnossa. Tieteeseen ne eivät kuulu.

3) Löysiä tutkimus- ja opetusmenetelmiä

Käytännön tutkimuksen tasolla feministisen pedagogiikan ongelma on käytettyjen menetelmien lepsuus. Eräs kirjoittaja esimerkiksi kuvaa "feminististä toimijuutta" koskevaa autoetnografista tutkimustaan, jossa "päähuomion saavat kokemukseni feministisen yliopistopedagogiikan kehittäjänä ja osallistuvana oppija-opettajana" (s. 90). Sama dosentti päättelee kokemuksistaan: "Tutkijan oma sitoutuminen on tärkeää ja ulkopuolisen havainnoijan (tai mestaroijan) sijaan tutkija on kanssatodistaja ja yhdessä tunnistaja" (s. 91). Tuonkaltainen tunnustuksellinen tutkimus ei liene valtavirtaa edes teologisessa tiedekunnassa. [1]

Verratkaapa näitä menetelmiä äskettäin esiteltyyn "rasismi-tutkimukseen":
https://hommaforum.org/index.php/topic,131771.msg3289802.html#msg3289802 (https://hommaforum.org/index.php/topic,131771.msg3289802.html#msg3289802)
https://hommaforum.org/index.php/topic,131771.msg3290402/topicseen.html#msg3290402 (https://hommaforum.org/index.php/topic,131771.msg3290402/topicseen.html#msg3290402)

   Koulutuspolitiikan lisäksi feministiset pedagogit ottavat kantaa talouspolitiikkaan. Pyrkimys on jälleen hyvä, mutta keinot kehnoja: "Niinpä esimerkiksi uusliberalistisen talouspolitiikan palveleminen on normalisoitunut itsestäänselvyydeksi, ja sen kyseenalaistaminen ja muuttaminen edellyttäisivät tiedon neutraaliuden myytin murtamista" (s. 59, korostus lisätty). Väite on tolkuton. Kaikenlaista talouspolitiikkaa – marxilaista tai uusliberalistista – voidaan kyseenalaistaa ja muuttaa, vaikka käsitys tiedosta olisi mikä tahansa. Tai oikeastaan väite ei edes ole väärin. Tulisi tarkentaa, kenen pitää uskoa, että tieto ei voi olla neutraalia, jotta talousteorioita voidaan kyseenalaistaa. Minäkään en kannata "uusliberalististen" talousarvojen soveltamista yliopistomaailmaan, mutta jos vaihtoehto on feministinen pedagogiikka ja sukupuolentutkimus, kannatan mieluummin markkinavetoisia ja tulosperusteisia malleja. Tämä on paljon sanottu kaltaiseltani sivistysyliopiston kannattajalta.

   Eroja ja vaarallisia suhteita -kirjassa kerrotaan myös eräästä kurssista, jonka läpäisyyn vaadittiin lopputentin sijasta oppimispäiväkirjan pitämistä. "Näissä puolentoista liuskan kirjallisissa tehtävissä opiskelijat sekä saavat että joutuvat vielä kerran palaamaan opetettuihin asioihin niitä omien oppimiskokemustensa ja -intressiensä kautta reflektoiden" (s. 128). Opettajan lainaamat otteet luentopäiväkirjoista ovat kiinnostavia. Mieleen tulee lähinnä lapsi, joka sanoo, mitä aikuiset haluavat kuulla. (...)

   Sama opettaja kirjoittaa: "Toisinaan oppimistehtävään ryhtyminen saattaa tuoda myös yllättäviä oivalluksia, jotka osoittavat, että paranoidisuus ei sekään välttämättä ole aina tuulesta temmattua" (s. 129, korostus lisätty). Kyse oli siitä, että luennoija "oli pyytänyt oppilaitaan etsimään mediasta lesbo-aiheisen uutisen ja pohtimaan sitä, millaiseksi asiaksi lesbous siinä määrittyy". Opiskelijan oppimispäiväkirjassa sanottiin: "Joko valitsin mediani täysin väärin tai sitten oikeasti mediassa ei esiinny seksuaalisiin suuntauksiin liittyvää uutisointia kovinkaan paljon". Luennoijan mielestä tämä opiskelijan havaitsema homouutisten vähäisyys on siis pätevä syy vainoharhaisuuteen. Ja itse asiassa jos olet hetero, samalla taidat opettajan mukaan automaattisesti normalisoida heteroutta: "En tunne tekstejä, joissa hetero-opettajat olisivat pohtineet kriittisesti oman sukupuoli-ilmaisunsa tai heteroseksuaalisuutensa normalisoivaa merkitystä osana pedagogiikkaansa" (s. 124, korostus lisätty).

   Joku voisi kertoa, missä heteronormatiiviset salaliitot piileksivät niin voisimme yhdessä käydä puhumassa heille järkeä. Ja mitä tulee homouutisoinnin määrään, se lienee ainakin ajoittain paljon yleisempää kuin erilaisten suuntautumisten määrä tai homoseksuaalien prosenttiosuus antaisivat ymmärtää. (Tässä ei tietysti ole mitään pahaa; vähemmistöjen tasa-arvoinen kohtelu saattaa lisääntyä heistä kertovien uutisten myötä.)
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Feministisen pedagogiikan asema akatemiassa

(...)

   Lukija saattaa ihmetellä, miksi olen laatinut näin myrkyllisen kirjoituksen näin marginaalisesta ilmiöstä. Pääsyy on se, että kannan huolta tulevista tutkijapolvista sekä tieteen, opetuksen ja tutkimuksen tasosta. Poliittiset ideologiat kun eivät aina ymmärrä pysytellä tiedekentän laitamilla. Ja kuten Eroja ja vaarallisia suhteita -kirjakin kertoo, feministinen yliopistopedagogiikka on jo "saanut opetusministeriön (nyk. OKM) ja yliopistojen rahoitusta, ja se on hyväksytty omaksi kokonaisuudekseen useiden yliopistojen opetusohjelmissa" (s. 92). Tiettyihin tutkimustuloksiin jo etukäteen sitoutunut ala on siis nauttinut yhteiskunnan tukea, vieläpä runsaalla kädellä: "...feministinen tutkimus ei esimerkiksi saadun tutkimusrahoituksen perusteella ole tätä nykyä erityisen marginaalista" (s. 99).

   Lisäsyy tekstiini on se, että politisoitunut ala hakee aktiivisesti tieteen auktoriteettia: "Feministisestä näkökulmasta pedagogista toimintaa voisi myös kutsua tilan valtaamiseksi tai 'omaksi huoneeksi', mutta samalla hävitettäisiin se puoli toiminnasta, jolla haetaan koulutuksen yleistä hyväksyvyyttä ja noteerausta" (s. 92). Ja pisteenä i:n päälle löysät menetelmät ovat paikoin jo muuttuneet osaksi opintovaatimuksia (s. 115). Siksi vetoan tieteen ystäviin: tulkaa kaapista, pelastetaan kasvatustiede epätieteellisen relativismin ja sanamanipulaation houkutuksilta.

   Akateemisen feminismin käsitys tiedosta ja todellisuudesta eroaa jo niin paljon luonnontieteiden ja itse asiassa kaikille tieteille yhteisen tieto-opin näkemyksistä, että puheyhteys tuntuu mahdottomalta. Luonnostelen siksi tähän loppuun jonkinlaista teesien sarjaa, joka sopisi keskustelun pohjaksi. Vähitellen mielipiteenvaihdon tulee ulottua täsmällisempiin ja yksityiskohtaisempiin tosiasiaväitteisiin. Vain siten voidaan edistää tiedettä ja paljastaa saloja ihmisenä olemisesta.

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Valitettavasti sekä biologian että tieteellisen metodin vähättely voi erilaisten sosiaalisten prosessien kautta jatkua vielä pitkään. Näin käy ainakin, jos kukaan ei taistele paremman tieteen puolesta.

(...)

Quote    S. 138: Feministinen pedagogiikka on sekä feministisen liikkeen että akateemisen feministisen tutkimuksen yhteistä tonttia.


Tulkitsen lausunnon myöntävän, että feministinen pedagogia on poliittista. Siksi on erikoista, että feministisen pedagogiikan kurssien opetuksesta vastaavat yliopistomme (Helsinki, Lappi, Tampere, Jyväskylä ja Turku). Miten tämä on mahdollista? Yliopistolaki toteaa, että "yliopistojen tulee järjestää toimintansa hyvää tieteellistä käytäntöä noudattaen". Hyvästä tieteellisestä käytännöstä ei luonnollisesti vallitse täyttä yksimielisyyttä, mutta jokunen yleisperiaate on silti ilmeinen; esimerkiksi se, että tieteen on oltava riippumatonta ulkopuolisista tekijöistä, jotka saattavat vääristää tutkimustuloksia. Toteutuuko tämä feministisessä tutkimuksessa tai feministisessä pedagogiikassa?

    s. 139: Aktivismin ja akatemian välit ovat monella tapaa yhteen kietoutuneet. Yliopistoissa sukupuolentutkimusta opiskelevat ovat usein feministisen liikkeen tai politiikan aktivisteja.


Opiskelijan ei tarvitse olla poliittisesti sitoutumaton, mutta tieteen tulee sitä olla. Tieteenalan sitoutuminen poliittiseen aatteeseen tarkoittaa tutkimustulosten tai niistä raportoinnin määräytymistä jo etukäteen. Jos sukupuolentutkimuksessa siis on jotakin tieteellistä, se on se osa, joka jää jäljelle, kun toiminnasta poistetaan feminismi.

QuoteIs there a non-Woke left anymore? Yes. Can we go back to it? No, not really. Wokeness evolved to exploit left-liberalism, so left-liberalism has no defenses to Wokeness. It literally has none. It doesn't create Wokeness; it just can't do anything to stop it. Not a single thing.

The liberal left isn't dead. It's castrated.
    — James Lindsay, Donald Trump of intellectuals (@ConceptualJames) March 26, 2021

QuoteThe Woke are technically not Nazis. This is a frequent and forgiveable mistake. The Nazis were National Socialists. The Woke are Supranational Socialists, which makes them Super-Nazis.
    — James Lindsay, Donald Trump of intellectuals (@ConceptualJames) March 26, 2021

QuoteCity of Oakland Mayor is branded racist for giving families of color $500 a month if they earn under $59,000 with no rules on how they spend it - but offering poor white families nothing

QuoteThe program, funded by wealthy private donors, explicitly excludes poor white families

An estimated 10,000 of Oakland's 435,000 population are white residents who live in poverty, defined by earning less than $12,880

QuoteA program to give $500 monthly checks to low-income families of color in Oakland, California, has been criticized for explicitly excluding the 10,000 white residents living in poverty in the city.

QuoteThe DailyMail.com contacted the City of Oakland director of communications and Oakland's citywide communications director to ask how the eligibility rules had been decided.

Neither had responded by Wednesday afternoon.

Oakland's homeless population rose by nearly 50 per cent between 2017 and 2019.

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, any individual earning less than $12,880 is in poverty.

QuoteTämä kirja varoittaa kahdesta asiasta: ylivalppaasta woke-aktivismista ja siitä murskaavasta voimasta, jonka teknologia kyttäyskoneistoille antaa. Teoksen nykyaikaisesta teemasta huolimatta pääosassa ovat 1900-luvun loppupuolen neuvostoterroria vastustaneet ja kansalaisvapauksia ajaneet, lähinnä kristinuskoon nojanneet toisinajattelijat. Näiltä Itä-blokin dissidenteiltä haetaan opastusta, miten harjoittaa vastarintaa ylivoimaisen vastustajan edessä.

Dreher kirjoittaa johdannossa:

    Amerikkalaisille, jotka eivät koskaan ole joutuneet elämään tällaisessa ideologisessa sumussa, on vaikea tunnistaa, mitä on tapahtumassa. Mitä tahansa tämä onkin, se ei ole tarkka kopio elämästä Neuvostoblokin maissa salaisine poliiseineen, rangaistussiirtoloineen, ankarine sensuurivaatimuksineen ja materiaalisine puutteineen. Juuri tämä on ongelma, nämä emigrantit varoittavat. Se tosiseikka, että suhteessa Neuvostoblokin oloihin elämä lännessä on edelleen vapaata ja vaurasta, tekee amerikkalaiset sokeaksi vapauttamme uhkaavien voimien kasvamiselle. Samoin kuin se seikka, että ne, jotka vapauksiamme vievät, puhuvat toiminnastaan sorrettujen uhrien vapauttamisena.

Myöhemmin Dreher jatkaa:

    Harva nykykonservatiivi ymmärtää tämän uhkan vakavuuden, ohittaen sen vain "poliittisena korrektiutena" – aiemman sukupolven väheksyvä termi "wokenessille". On helppo väheksyä entisen neuvostoprofessorin kaltaisia ihmisiä hysteerisinä, jos pidät nykytapahtumia vain 1990-luvun kampusten vasemmistosekoilun uusintana. Tuolloin konservatiivien vakiovastaus oli vähättelevä: Odota, että penskat siirtyvät todelliseen maailmaan ja ovat pakotettuja etsimään töitä.

       No, he siirtyivät – ja ottivat kampuksen mukaansa yritysmaailmaan, laki- ja lääketieteen ammatteihin, mediaan, peruskouluun, lukioihin ja muhin Amerikan instituutioihin. Tässä kulttuurivallankumouksessa, joka voimistui keväällä ja kesällä 2020, he yrittävät muuttaa koko maan "woke" kampukseksi.


Viesti toisin sanoen kuuluu: Se voi tapahtua täälläkin. Dreher ja hänen haastateltavansa näkevät yhtäläisyyksiä Venäjän tapahtumissa ennen vallankumousta ja heikentyvän Yhdysvaltojen nykymenossa. Muutos nykylännessä ei tietenkään tapahdu samalla tavoin kuin aikoinaan Venäjällä tai sodanjälkeisessä Itä-Euroopassa, ovathan ajat muuttuneet. Mutta edelleen kyse on totalitarismin houkutuksesta, tällä kertaa kasvot vain ovat – ainakin toistaiseksi – hieman lempeämmät. Perään Dreher toteaa, että klassinen liberalismi on kuolemassa muuallakin kuin Yhdysvalloissa – ja että sen seuraaja ei ole vielä syntynyt.

Dreher luettelee totalitarismin nousuun liittyviä seikkoja: yksilön eristäytyminen, yksinäisyyden lisääntyminen, instituutioiden arvovallan romahtaminen, halu tuhota yhteiskunnallisia rakenteita, propagandan lisääntyminen, ihmisten halu uskoa hyödyllisiä valheita ja uskollisuuden arvostaminen asiantuntijuutta korkeammalle. Resurssien rajallisuus, joka koskee myös totalitaristisia järjestelmiä, tarkoittaa, että systeemiä on pidettävä kasassa mahdollisimman pienellä vaivalla. Neuvostototalitarismissa tämä käytännössä tarkoitti, että jo pelkkä syytös yksilön tekemästä rikoksesta – yleensä ajatusrikoksesta – muuttuu osoitukseksi rikokseen syyllistymisestä. Nykyaika ei tässä suhteessa ole kovin erilainen: vaikka vihjailu tai syytös olisi esitetty kuinka huolettomasti ja huolimattomasti tahansa, syytöksellä on taipumus tarttua yksilöön ja haitata hänen elämäänsä – jopa perhe-elämää, ulottuuhan ihmisten rankaisuhalu joskus lähisukulaisiin asti.

Quote1/ One of most important things I've learned:

Severe personality problems find *camouflage.* No one thinks "I'm a sadist" or "I'm a malignant narcissist."

They find a belief system/social group that validates their most hateful, destructive impulses & construes them as virtues.

2/ The most toxic and hateful people in the world are 100% convinced they fight for what is true and right.

3/ They find a way to give free rein to their cruelty, to attack, to treat others cruelly and viciously. *And they find allies to cheer them on* who also believe they are on the side of all that is true and good.

4/ For colleagues looking for more theoretical explanation, the psychological processes are splitting, projection &  projective identification. Splitting means not recognizing one's own capacity for hate, cruelty, and destructiveness. The person is blind to the bad in themselves.

5/ Instead, they project the badness onto some designated other. And this other person, via the defense of projection, is now seen as the repository of all that is bad and evil and necessary to destroy. That's the projection.

The person now feels fully justified in unleashing

6/ their viciousness and hate on the other person, who is now seen (via projection) as someone monstrous who must be destroyed at all cost. If the person who is projected on attempts to protect or defend themselves, this is now seen as further confirmation of how hateful and evil

7/ they are (this is what is called is "projective identification.") The end result is that the person can deny their own sadism, cruelty, and hate—while simultaneously acting it out without restraint. And feel themselves to be 100% on the side of truth and right as they do it.

QuoteFrench philosopher Michel Foucault 'abused boys in Tunisia'

Michel Foucault was one of the first celebrity intellectuals of the 20th century remembered not only for his controversial analyses of prisons, madness and sexuality but for signing a petition in 1977 to legalise sex with children aged 13

The philosopher Michel Foucault, a beacon of today's "woke" ideology, has become the latest prominent French figure to face a retrospective reckoning for sexually abusing children.

A fellow intellectual, Guy Sorman, has unleashed a storm among Parisian "intellos" with his claim that Foucault, who died in 1984 aged 57, was a paedophile rapist who had sex with Arab children while living in Tunisia in the late 1960s.

Sorman, 77, said he had visited Foucault with a group of friends on an Easter holiday trip to the village of Sidi Bou Said, near Tunis, where the philosopher was living in 1969. "Young children were running after Foucault saying 'what about me? take me, take me'," he recalled last week in an interview with The Sunday Times (...)(...)

Quote from: zupi on 28.03.2021, 22:08:17
Alkaako wokeistien lemppari postmodernisti viimeinkin saamaan ansaitsemaansa mainetta ja kunniaa? Tuo pedofiiliraiskaaja kehitteli juuri siis näitä tietoon ja valtaan liittyviä sekopäisyyksiä, joihin nykyinen wokeismi pohjautuu (uusmarxismin ohella).

QuoteMichel Foucault 15 October 1926 – 25 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic.

Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how they are used as a form of social control through societal institutions. Though often cited as a structuralist and postmodernist, Foucault rejected these labels. His thought has influenced academics, especially those working in communication studies, anthropology, psychology, sociology, criminology, cultural studies, literary theory, feminism, Marxism and critical theory.

Prone to self-harm, in 1948 Foucault allegedly attempted suicide; his father sent him to see the psychiatrist Jean Delay at the Sainte-Anne Hospital Center. Obsessed with the idea of self-mutilation and suicide, Foucault attempted the latter several times in ensuing years, praising suicide in later writings. The ENS's doctor examined Foucault's state of mind, suggesting that his suicidal tendencies emerged from the distress surrounding his homosexuality, because same-sex sexual activity was socially taboo in France. At the time, Foucault engaged in homosexual activity with men whom he encountered in the underground Parisian gay scene, also indulging in drug use; according to biographer James Miller, he enjoyed the thrill and sense of danger that these activities offered him.

Embracing the Parisian avant-garde, Foucault entered into a romantic relationship with the serialist composer Jean Barraqué. Together, they tried to produce their greatest work, heavily used recreational drugs and engaged in sado-masochistic sexual activity.

Like France and Sweden, Poland legally tolerated but socially frowned on homosexual activity, and Foucault undertook relationships with a number of men; one was with a Polish security agent who hoped to trap Foucault in an embarrassing situation, which therefore would reflect badly on the French embassy. Wracked in diplomatic scandal, he was ordered to leave Poland for a new destination. Various positions were available in West Germany, and so Foucault relocated to the Institut français Hamburg (where he served as director in 1958–60), teaching the same courses he had given in Uppsala and Warsaw. Spending much time in the Reeperbahn red light district, he entered into a relationship with a transvestite.

In 1977, Italian newspaper Corriere della sera asked Foucault to write a column for them. In doing so, in 1978 he travelled to Tehran in Iran, days after the Black Friday massacre. Documenting the developing Iranian Revolution, he met with opposition leaders such as Mohammad Kazem Shariatmadari and Mehdi Bazargan, and discovered the popular support for Islamism. Returning to France, he was one of the journalists who visited the Ayatollah Khomeini, before visiting Tehran. His articles expressed awe of Khomeini's Islamist movement, for which he was widely criticised in the French press, including by Iranian expatriates. Foucault's response was that Islamism was to become a major political force in the region, and that the West must treat it with respect rather than hostility.

In October 1980, Foucault became a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, giving the Howison Lectures on "Truth and Subjectivity", while in November he lectured at the Humanities Institute at New York University. His growing popularity in American intellectual circles was noted by Time magazine, while Foucault went on to lecture at UCLA in 1981, the University of Vermont in 1982, and Berkeley again in 1983, where his lectures drew huge crowds. Foucault spent many evenings in the San Francisco gay scene, frequenting sado-masochistic bathhouses, engaging in unprotected sex. He praised sado-masochistic activity in interviews with the gay press, describing it as "the real creation of new possibilities of pleasure, which people had no idea about previously." Foucault contracted HIV and eventually developed AIDS. Little was known of the virus at the time; the first cases had only been identified in 1980. Foucault initially referred to AIDS as a "dreamed-up disease". In summer 1983, he developed a persistent dry cough, which concerned friends in Paris, but Foucault insisted it was just a pulmonary infection.

On 26 June 1984, Libération announced Foucault's death, mentioning the rumour that it had been brought on by AIDS. Soon after his death, Foucault's partner Daniel Defert founded the first national HIV/AIDS organisation in France, AIDES.

Foucault was a vocal proponent of consensual adult-child underage sex and pedophilia, considering them signs of liberation of both actors; he argued young children could give consent. In 1977, along with Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, and other intellectuals, Foucault signed a petition to the French parliament calling for the decriminalization of all "consensual" sexual relations between adults and minors below the age of fifteen, the age of consent in France. He'd also written an open letter in the Le Monde in defense of three convicted pedophiles. Foucault has been described by the Windsor Star as a "pedophile guru".

In France-Amérique, Guy Sorman claimed that while staying in Tunisia, Foucault had practiced pedophilia by "paying for little boys". In a further interview, he claimed Foucault would have sex with children in a graveyard.

Quote"They were eight, nine, ten years old, I threw money at them and said: 'See you at 10 at night at the usual place.' This, it seemed, was the local cemetery: "There I made love on the tombstones with the boys. The question of consent has not even been raised."

Sorman said that "Foucault would not have dared to do that in France," comparing him to Paul Gauguin, the impressionist who had sex with girls who painted in Tahiti, and Andre Gide, the novelist who persecuted boys in Africa. "There is a colonial dimension to this. White imperialism."

Sorman said he regretted not reporting Foucault to the police at the time or to the press, calling his behavior "ignoble" and "extremely morally ugly."

(...)

Sorman's remarks surprised experts in Britain, where Foucault's latest volume on the history of sexuality in four parts has just been published for the first time in English. For Sorman, Foucault's behavior was symptomatic of a distinctive French malaise dating back to Voltaire. "He believed that there were two moral principles, one for the elite, which was immoral, and one for the people, which should be restrictive."

He continued: "France is not yet a democracy, we had the revolution, we proclaimed a republic, but there is still an aristocracy, it is the intelligentsia, and it has had a special status. Anything will do. "Now, however," the world is suddenly changing, "Sorman added.

The intellectual said, however, that Foucault should not be "canceled."  (...)

Quote(...)(...)

You first landed on my radar when you began releasing documents handed to you by various whistleblowers detailing Critical Race Theory and how it was being instituted in both government and schools.  This led to Trump's Executive Order banning the instruction of CRT in US Government offices.  How much of an influence do you think your work had on this decision?

It was instantaneous. I did the opening monologue on Tucker Carlson sharing my research and then directly asking the President to issue an executive order banning critical race theory from the Federal Government. At seven o'clock the next morning, I got a call from Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who said the President saw the segment and wanted to take action. I provided my research to the White House and the Executive Order came out less than three weeks later. That's really to the Trump Administration's credit. Jeb Bush wouldn't have had the stones to take on this issue; Trump got it done in a few weeks.

Others have laid out different strategies in fighting CRT.  Some have suggested confronting Corporate HR Trainers either overtly or subtly so that fellow employees would 'see through' its illogic and inherent awfulness.  Why are these approaches either useless or even counterproductive?

You can't persuade zealots with logic, facts, and clever argumentation; they only understand the language of power. That's why the campaign to prove that you're "the real liberal" or "more antiracist than the antiracists" is doomed to failure. Like it or not, Critical Race Theory is the driving force of the modern intellectual Left; they're not going back to the philosophy of FDR, LBJ, or MLK. And they scrupulously follow the old dictum of "no enemies to the left"—they will dispatch the centrist liberals with even more vitriol and brutality than they dispatch the conservatives. This is also the core dilemma of the IDW crowd: many of them cannot imagine aligning with political conservatives; they operate under the delusion that they can "recapture the centre" and convince the planet of the virtue of Enlightenment values. That's not how politics works. We live in a polarized political system—one winner, one loser. You'll remember that the Girondins went to the guillotine. If, metaphorically speaking, the centrist liberals want to avoid the same fate, they will have to make an alliance with Trump-loving, truck-driving, gun-toting Middle Americans. That's reality. We'll see if they heed it.

For the novices out there, what is Critical Race Theory, and why is it so dangerous?

I'm lazy, so I'll paraphrase from a recent paper. Critical Race Theory is an academic discipline that holds that the United States is a nation founded on white supremacy and oppression, and that these forces are still at the root of our society. Critical Race Theorists believe that American institutions (such as the Constitution and legal system), preach freedom and equality, but are mere "camouflages" for naked racial domination. They believe that racism is a constant, universal condition: it simply becomes more subtle, sophisticated, and insidious over the course of history. In simple terms, critical race theory reformulates the old Marxist dichotomy of oppressor and oppressed, replacing the class categories of bourgeoisie and proletariat with the identity categories of White and Black. But the basic conclusions are the same: in order to liberate man, society must be fundamentally transformed through moral, economic, and political revolution.

One of the main faces of CRT right now is academic Ibram X. Kendi.  He famously stated:

Quote from: rotuhuijari"And so what I'm trying to do with my work is to really get Americans to eliminate the concept of "not racist" from their vocabulary, and realize we're either being racist or anti-racist". 

This is rather sinister, as it places everything within the prism of race, and leaves nothing outside of it, while rejecting all subtlety and nuance that is par for the course when it comes to human beings.  To him, 'racism' is America's Original Sin.  This very much comes across as Christianity stripped of Christ, but with the same zeal and intensity of the Early Christians (and some of those that followed centuries later), with 'Wokeness' as the new Catechism.

Ibram X. Kendi is a human fortune cookie. His intellectual output is an endless buffet of word salad and phony wisdom: "Denial is the heartbeat of racism"; "In order to truly be anti-racist, you also have to truly be anti-capitalist"; "Whiteness is literally posing an existential threat to humanity." In my investigative reporting, I've noticed something quite interesting: the core demographic of Kendi readers is liberal, white, middle-aged women who work in public institutions. On one hand, this is a surprise: Kendi embraces a radical vision of Black Power-style revolution. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense: Kendi's politics provides a vicarious thrill, but is completely in line with conventional wisdom. It's revolution without risk; it's liberation without leaving the house. That's really the best way to understand what he's doing. He's not a revolutionary; he's a self-help guru for white liberals and a reputation-laundering mechanism for multinational corporations. He is an apostle of anti-whiteness, but a mouthpiece for elite white opinion. He preaches anti-capitalism, but accepts Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.

His book "How To Be An Antiracist" has been receiving the predictable effusive praise and is also now on the official US Navy Reading List. His ambitions are grand, and in my opinion, megalomaniacal.  He is actively pushing the concept of an "...anti-racist amendment to the US Constitution..." that would create a committee with oversight over the entire US Government, as it would sit in judgment as to whether policies or laws are racist or not (and those deemed racist would have to be eliminated as they would be unconstitutional), and would monitor politicians and public servants to see if they are engaged in the various forms of racism that Kendi has outlined in his book.

This is the question: what do the Critical Race Theorists mean by "equity"? I just published a paper for The Heritage Foundation that lays out the evidence. As it turns out, Critical Race Theory is not about racial sensitivity training or nondiscrimination policies—it's simply reheated, 1960s-style Marxism. The Critical Race Theorists can be coy sometimes, but it's pretty simple to explain what they want. UCLA law professor Cheryl Harris has argued that private property rights should be suspended, the government should seize land and wealth from the rich, and then redistribute it along racial lines—she wants to move away from a system of individual rights and "mere nondiscrimination," towards a system of group identity-based rights and positive discrimination. As you mention, Ibram X. Kendi has argued for the creation of an unaccountable fourth branch of government with the power to abolish any law in the country and censor the speech of politicians and intellectuals who are not deemed "antiracist." Pretty quickly, we're talking about eliminating the rights to private property, freedom of speech, equal protection under the law, and the separation of powers. That's not an agenda for reforming the United States—it's an agenda for ending the United States. They're not advertising it in those terms; but they're not exactly hiding it, either.

(...)(...)

Quote1/ Ever wonder why the "woke" try to hijack major holidays? They'll say:

-Father's day is about trans men
-Mothers day is about trans women
-Thanksgiving is about colonialism
-Holiday conversation starters should be about pronouns

Let's talk about holiday hijacking

A thread

2/ While it may seem like they're just being petty, there actually is a reason they do this, and it has to do with how they think about culture.

Their view of culture drives many of their tactics, including holiday hijacking, so understanding that is VERY important.

Let's begin

3/ The first idea we need to understand is "cultural hegemony."

Cultural hegemony is control of the culture via social institutions. The group that's ascendant in the culture (and whose ideas, beliefs, views and values dominate culture and institutions) has "cultural hegemony"

4/ The concept was developed by the Marxist Antonio Gramsci. He thought those who make and control culture determine which beliefs and ideas are spread through society. So the worldview and ideology of the culturally dominant people becomes the dominant worldview in society.

5/ The idea is that you can seize a factory, but unless that power is backed up by a culture that says what you are doing is good, beautiful, and just then any political gains are will be short-lived. In order to take and *KEEP* power long-term you need to have *cultural power*

6/ The idea of cultural hegemony was picked up by Critical Social justice and mixed in with a view of culture that is heavily influenced by postmodernism. Once I explain the postmodern influence, we can then show exactly how it all fits together...

7/ There is a little history we need to touch on here if we want to get it right.
In 1967 Guy Debord argued in "The Society of the spectacle" that consumer capitalism took every authentic human experience, commodified it, and sold it back to us through advertising and mass media.

8/ He thought *all* social relations are mediated by images created and sold to us by mass media. A collective brainwashing that has taken over everything from Christmas (create the perfect Christmas moment, like on T.V.) to dating (create the perfect date, like in the movies)...

9/ Guy Deboard's student Jean Baudrillard took it a step further. Baudrillard said it isn't just that mass media brainwashes you, it's that the ideas, symbols, signifiers, of culture form an inescapable mental matrix that influences **ALL** of your thinking.

Sound familiar?

10/ For Baudrillard, we are drowning in a sea of signs, symbols, memes, ideas, and information. People are caught up in the play of images, spectacles, and symbols that are becoming disconnected to any external reality.

The only access to reality we have is filtered via culture.

11/ This means the ideas, symbols, signifiers, and ideology of "the system" hold so much sway you can't help but interpret the world through the lens the system gives you. You've literally lost contact with what is actually real and you only see through the lens of the system...

12/ Baudrillard, alongside Jacques Derrida and Michael Foucault formed the backbone of postmodern philosophy, and their philosophies all imply reality is not objectively knowable:

Baudrillard thought society replaced reality via symbols and signs: A human simulation of reality.

13/ Foucault thought power and knowledge were hopelessly intertwined and because of how they're connected getting at objective truth, free from bias, was impossible.

Derrida's philosophy implies that objectively correct final interpretations of anything are simply not possible.

14/ When Critical Social Justice (wokeness) picked up postmodernism (and the postmodern emphasis on culture and language) they shifted away from physical material reality/circumstances and focused more on culture. This fit perfectly with Gramsci's ideas about cultural hegemony...

15/ Postmodernism turned activists toward the culture and provided the tools to do a far more potent analysis of cultural hegemony.

The result was a commitment to taking the culture and building a new hegemony; the goal was to completely own every area of *cultural production*

16/ So now that we understand all that, lets analyze holiday hijacking.

The woke want to take over every area of culture so they can establish their own cultural hegemony, and since holidays are cultural events and cultural celebrations, the woke want to take them over....

17/ You see, when we celebrate Mother's day we celebrate it on *OUR* terms. That means we celebrate Mothers for what we know them to be: biologically Female parents.

Since the woke think people can change genders, and change sex they can't allow that....

18/ Because they want total cultural hegemony, they want to take the holiday over and make it a woke holiday. This means removing the old idea about mothers as female parents who give birth (or adopt) and replacing it with the idea that "mother" is just a social construct...

19/ Which includes trans women and nonbinary and intersex and every other new gender identity you can think of. The way they do this is to insufferably make trans-women the focus of Mother's day and to find ways to performatively make that point throughout the day.

20/ The woke think they need to "center" trans-women on mothers day (and trans men on fathers day, and atheism on Christmas and colonialism on thanksgiving) to drive home the point that the holiday is going to be deconstructed and remade in the image of woke ideology...

21/ Letting us celebrate in peace is not an option. They need to "disrupt" and "interrupt" our celebration of Mother's day so they can establish their view as the dominant view.

It would be like someone showing up at your birthday party and trying to make it about themselves...

22/ Because holidays are part of the culture they need to be taken over, just like every other think in our society that has any cultural value or cultural cache.

That is why they do this:

23/ So the next time someone does this you should treat what they are doing like exactly what it is: a power move which is meant to help them establish total cultural dominance. This means you should completely dismiss it, and do so firmly, not gently.

24/ Don't let them sucker you into letting them win for the sake of peace. Push back, and tell them no.

/fin

Quote17 May: @vihreat and @MariaOhisalo Vihreät muuttuu päivä päivältä kuvottavampaan suuntaan. Suomalaisuuden päivänä hehkutitti islamia ja Kaatuneiden muistopäivänä homoja sekä transuja. Aivan kertakaikkisen vastenmielinen puolue

QuoteHow French "Intellectuals" Ruined the West: Postmodernism & Its Impact, Explained

Postmodernism presents a threat not only to liberal democracy but to modernity itself. That may sound like a bold or even hyperbolic claim, but the reality is that the cluster of ideas and values at the root of postmodernism have broken the bounds of academia and gained great cultural power in western society. The irrational and identitarian "symptoms" of postmodernism are easily recognizable and much criticized, but the ethos underlying them is not well understood. This is partly because postmodernists rarely explain themselves clearly and partly because of the inherent contradictions and inconsistencies of a way of thought which denies a stable reality or reliable knowledge to exist. However, there are consistent ideas at the root of postmodernism and understanding them is essential if we intend to counter them. They underlie the problems we see today in Social Justice Activism, undermine the credibility of the Left and threaten to return us to an irrational and tribal "pre-modern" culture.

Postmodernism, most simply, is an artistic and philosophical movement which began in France in the 1960s and produced bewildering art and even more bewildering  "theory." It drew on avant-garde and surrealist art and earlier philosophical ideas, particularly those of Nietzsche and Heidegger, for its anti-realism and rejection of the concept of the unified and coherent individual. It reacted against the liberal humanism of the modernist artistic and intellectual movements, which its proponents saw as naïvely universalizing a western, middle-class and male experience.

It rejected philosophy which valued ethics, reason and clarity with the same accusation. Structuralism, a movement which (often over-confidently) attempted to analyze human culture and psychology according to consistent structures of relationships, came under attack. Marxism, with its understanding of society through class and economic structures was regarded as equally rigid and simplistic. Above all, postmodernists attacked science and its goal of attaining objective knowledge about a reality which exists independently of human perceptions which they saw as merely another form of constructed ideology dominated by bourgeois, western assumptions. Decidedly left-wing, postmodernism had both a nihilistic and a revolutionary ethos which resonated with a post-war, post-empire zeitgeist in the West. As postmodernism continued to develop and diversify, its initially stronger nihilistic deconstructive phase became secondary (but still fundamental) to its revolutionary "identity politics" phase.

It has been a matter of contention whether postmodernism is a reaction against modernity. The modern era is the period of history which saw Renaissance Humanism, the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution and the development of liberal values and human rights; the period when Western societies gradually came to value reason and science over faith and superstition as routes to knowledge, and developed a concept of the person as an individual member of the human race deserving of rights and freedoms rather than as part of various collectives subject to rigid hierarchical roles in society.

(...) If we see the essence of modernity as the development of science and reason as well as humanism and universal liberalism, postmodernists are opposed to it. If we see modernity as the tearing down of structures of power including feudalism, the Church, patriarchy, and Empire, postmodernists are attempting to continue it, but their targets are now science, reason, humanism and liberalism. Consequently, the roots of postmodernism are inherently political and revolutionary, albeit in a destructive or, as they would term it, deconstructive way.

(...)

JEAN-FRANÇOIS LYOTARD

Michel Foucault's (PEDOFIILIRAISKAAJA) work is also centered on language and relativism although he applied this to history and culture. He called this approach "archeology" because he saw himself as "uncovering" aspects of historical culture through recorded discourses (speech which promotes or assumes a particular view). For Foucault, discourses control what can be "known" and in different periods and places, different systems of institutional power control discourses. Therefore, knowledge is a direct product of power. "In any given culture and at any given moment, there is always only one 'episteme' that defines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge, whether expressed in theory or silently invested in a practice."[1]

Furthermore, people themselves were culturally constructed. (...)

We see in Foucault the most extreme expression of cultural relativism (https://newdiscourses.com/2020/11/why-world-cultural-relativism-descendents/ (https://newdiscourses.com/2020/11/why-world-cultural-relativism-descendents/)) read through structures of power in which shared humanity and individuality are almost entirely absent. Instead, people are constructed by their position in relation to dominant cultural ideas either as oppressors or oppressed. (...)

(...)

We see in Derrida further relativism, both cultural and epistemic, and further justification for identity politics. There is an explicit denial that differences can be other than oppositional and therefore a rejection of Enlightenment liberalism's values of overcoming differences and focusing on universal human rights and individual freedom and empowerment. We see here the basis of "ironic misandry" and the mantra "reverse racism isn't real" and the idea that identity dictates what can be understood. We see too a rejection of the need for clarity in speech and argument and to understand the other's point of view and avoid misnterpretation. The intention of the speaker is irrelevant. What matters is the impact of speech. This, along with Foucauldian ideas, underlies the current belief in the deeply damaging nature of "microaggressions" and misuse of terminology related to gender, race or sexuality.


JACQUES DERRIDA

Lyotard, Foucault, and Derrida are just three of the "founding fathers" of postmodernism but their ideas share common themes with other influential "theorists" and were taken up by later postmodernists who applied them to an increasingly diverse range of disciplines within the social sciences and humanities. We've seen that this includes an intense sensitivity to language on the level of the word and a feeling that what the speaker means is less important than how it is received, no matter how radical the interpretation (terveisiä Tomi Salinille). Shared humanity and individuality are essentially illusions and people are propagators or victims of discourses depending on their social position; a position which is dependent on identity far more than their individual engagement with society. Morality is culturally relative, as is reality itself. Empirical evidence is suspect and so are any culturally dominant ideas including science, reason, and universal liberalism. These are Enlightenment values which are naïve, totalizing and oppressive, and there is a moral necessity to smash them. Far more important is the lived experience, narratives and beliefs of "marginalized" groups all of which are equally "true" but must now be privileged over Enlightenment values to reverse an oppressive, unjust and entirely arbitrary social construction of reality, morality and knowledge.

(...) Freedom of speech is under threat because speech is now dangerous. So dangerous that people considering themselves liberal can now justify responding to it with violence. The need to argue a case persuasively using reasoned argument is now often replaced with references to identity and pure rage.

Despite all the evidence that racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and xenophobia are at an all-time low in Western societies, Leftist academics and SocJus activists display a fatalistic pessimism, enabled by postmodern interpretative "reading" practices which valorize confirmation bias. The authoritarian power of the postmodern academics and activists seems to be invisible to them whilst being apparent to everyone else. As Andrew Sullivan says of intersectionality:

"It posits a classic orthodoxy through which all of human experience is explained — and through which all speech must be filtered. ... Like the Puritanism once familiar in New England, intersectionality controls language and the very terms of discourse." [7]

Postmodernism has become a Lyotardian metanarrative, a Foucauldian system of discursive power (tämä liittyy varmaan jotenkin lasten raiskaamiseen), and a Derridean oppressive hierarchy.

(...)

Physicists Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont address the same problem from the perspective of science in Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science:

"Who could now seriously deny the 'grand narrative' of evolution, except someone in the grip of a far less plausible master narrative such as Creationism? And who would wish to deny the truth of basic physics? The answer was, 'some postmodernists.'"

and

"There is something very odd indeed in the belief that in looking, say, for causal laws or a unified theory, or in asking whether atoms really do obey the laws of quantum mechanics, the activities of scientists are somehow inherently 'bourgeois' or 'Eurocentric' or 'masculinist', or even 'militarist.'"

(...)

The social sciences and humanities, however, are in danger of changing out of all recognition. Some disciplines within the social sciences already have. Cultural anthropology, sociology, cultural studies and gender studies, for example, have succumbed almost entirely not only to moral relativism but epistemic relativism. English (literature) too, in my experience, is teaching a thoroughly postmodern orthodoxy. Philosophy, as we have seen, is divided. So is history.

(...)

The dangers of postmodernism are not limited to pockets of society which center around academia and Social Justice, however. Relativist ideas, sensitivity to language and focus on identity over humanity or individuality have gained dominance in wider society. It is much easier to say what you feel than rigorously examine the evidence. The freedom to "interpret" reality according to one's own values feeds into the very human tendency towards confirmation bias and motivated reasoning.

(...)

(oikeistoa koskevat herja-jutut jätetty pois. joka tapauksessa:)

This "set of concepts" threaten to take us back to a time before the Enlightenment, when "reason" was regarded as not only inferior to faith but as a sin.

(...)

Quote from: Waldseemüller on 08.04.2021, 09:39:27
^ Tuleva piikki lento-onnettomuuksissa on sitten rasismin ja naisvihan syytä, tämä näin ennakkovaroituksena.

QuoteWhite supremacy is the root of all race-related violence in the US

Amid the disturbing rise in attacks on Asian Americans since March 2020 is a troubling category of these assaults: Black people are also attacking Asian Americans.

White people are the main perpetrators of anti-Asian racism. (...)

QuoteAs the current president of the Association for Asian American Studies and as an ethnic studies and critical race studies professor who specializes in Asian American culture, I wanted to address the climate of anti-Asian racism I was seeing at the start of the pandemic. (...)

The point I've made through all of those experiences is that anti-Asian racism has the same source as anti-Black racism: white supremacy. So when a Black person attacks an Asian person, the encounter is fueled perhaps by racism, but very specifically by white supremacy. White supremacy does not require a white person to perpetuate it.

QuoteA Peculiar Kind of Racist Patriarchy

We are frequently told by commentators and theorists on the progressive and liberal Left that we live in a systemically racist and patriarchal society. The belief that Western societies privilege white men and oppress people of color, women, and LGBT citizens is especially popular within academic institutions, legacy media, the entertainment industry, and even sports. However, newly released statistics from the US Department of Labor for the third quarter of 2020 undermine this narrative. Asian women have now surpassed white men in weekly earnings. That trend has been consistent throughout this past year—an unprecedented outcome. Full-time working Asian women earned $1,224 in median weekly earnings in the third quarter of this year compared to $1,122 earned by their white male counterparts. Furthermore, the income gap between both black and Latino men and Asian women is wider than it has ever been. The income gap between white and black women, meanwhile, is much narrower than the gap between their male counterparts.

These outcomes cannot exist in a society suffused with misogyny and racism. As confounding to conventional progressive wisdom as these new figures appear to be, copious research finds that ethnic minorities and women frequently eclipse their white and male counterparts, even when these identities intersect. Several ethnic minority groups consistently out-perform whites in a variety of categories—higher test scores, lower incarceration rates, and longer life expectancies. According to the latest data from the US Census Bureau, over the 12 months covered by the survey, the median household incomes of Syrian Americans ($74,047), Korean Americans ($76,674), Indonesian Americans ($93,501), Taiwanese Americans ($102,405), and Filipino Americans ($100,273) are all significantly higher than that of whites ($69,823).

(...)

A study from the University of Michigan compared the earnings trajectories of African immigrant women and men to their US-born counterparts. The (very left-leaning) researchers went into the study with an intersectional analytic framework, stating: "The double disadvantage would predict that black African women would be disadvantaged by the interaction of their race and gender." But having analyzed the data, the authors concluded: "However, these are not the patterns that we found." While African-born black men had lower earnings than US-born white men, African-born black women had higher earnings than US-born white women. Interestingly, the researchers found that the income growth rate of female African immigrants has outpaced that of both US-born men and women. Black female immigrants from Africa saw a 130 percent rise in their income between 1990 and 2010, eclipsing the earnings of both white and black American women. No variance of the oversimplified "institutionalized racism" or intersectionality framework can adequately explain these complex socioeconomic outcomes, even when the researchers are biased in that direction.

Intersectionality is such a misconceived lens through which to understand the world that often white men fare worse than some of the most "oppressed" victim groups in our society. For example, the latest Census data indicate that the median earnings for full-time, year-round female Palestinian American workers ($52,061), female Iranian American workers ($64,220), and female Turkish American workers ($67,759) were all higher than those of white women ($45,581). Turkish and Iranian women also out-earned white men ($57,003). The vast majority of these women have not two but three "oppression variables" because of their gender, ethnicity, and religion (Islam).

(...)

QuoteIt's not just white people

White supremacy is an ideology, a pattern of values and beliefs that are ingrained in nearly every system and institution in the U.S. It is a belief that to be white is to be human and invested with inalienable universal rights and that to be not-white means you are less than human – a disposable object for others to abuse and misuse.

The dehumanization of Asian people by U.S. society is driven by white supremacy and not by any Black person who may or may not hate Asians.

(...)

Stories of individual harassment and violence perpetrated against Asian Americans by white assailants don't always get the same attention as the viral videos of Black aggression toward Asians.

QuoteBut underlying all these incidents is white supremacy, just as white supremacy is responsible for Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd's neck for over eight minutes: White supremacy made Floyd into a Black male threat rather than a human being.

QuoteUnderstanding the depth and reach of this ideology of racism can be challenging, but doing so brings each person, and the nation as a whole, closer to addressing systemic inequity. It's not Black people whom Asian Americans need to fear. It's white supremacy.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Jennifer Ho, University of Colorado Boulder.

Quote from: zupi on 23.03.2021, 01:02:24

https://journal.fi/kasvatusjaaika/article/view/84816/47404 (https://journal.fi/kasvatusjaaika/article/view/84816/47404)

QuoteMiksi meidän kaikkien pitäisi olla feministisiä pedagogeja

QuoteTietokirjoituksissa käydään läpi feministisen pedagogiikan taustaa: teoreettisen perustan
nähdään nivoutuvan Paulo Freiren ajatteluun ja sosiaalista oikeudenmukaisuutta tavoittelevaan
kriittiseen pedagogiikkaan. (...)

Quote from: zupi on 24.03.2021, 14:26:28

Pistetään loppuun vielä pätkä jo aiemmin linkkaamastani Osmon kirjoituksesta vuodelta 2019, nimeltään "Akateeminen feminismi ja etenkin feministinen pedagogiikka on pettänyt tieteen ja tasa-arvon. Yliopistossa toimii puoluetoimisto tiedekunnan statuksella."

Quote    S. 138: Feministinen pedagogiikka on sekä feministisen liikkeen että akateemisen feministisen tutkimuksen yhteistä tonttia.

Tulkitsen lausunnon myöntävän, että feministinen pedagogia on poliittista. Siksi on erikoista, että feministisen pedagogiikan kurssien opetuksesta vastaavat yliopistomme (Helsinki, Lappi, Tampere, Jyväskylä ja Turku). Miten tämä on mahdollista? Yliopistolaki toteaa, että "yliopistojen tulee järjestää toimintansa hyvää tieteellistä käytäntöä noudattaen". Hyvästä tieteellisestä käytännöstä ei luonnollisesti vallitse täyttä yksimielisyyttä, mutta jokunen yleisperiaate on silti ilmeinen; esimerkiksi se, että tieteen on oltava riippumatonta ulkopuolisista tekijöistä, jotka saattavat vääristää tutkimustuloksia. Toteutuuko tämä feministisessä tutkimuksessa tai feministisessä pedagogiikassa?

Quote1/ Woke teachers are ruining education. This elementary teacher, who doesn't know when America was founded, says she teaches her students about leftist protesting and activism but refuses to teach the actual curriculum. a thread about how we got here:

2/ Here's another elementary school teacher saying she sees teaching as a political act and that social justice (AKA: wokeness) is the foundation of ALL learning

3/ Why do teachers like her think this? It's because professors of education in the universities and colleges of education (where teachers are trained) think what goes on in the classroom is all about politics, and have been claiming that teaching is a political act:

4/ In "The Critical Turn in Education"  Isaac gottesman, explains how leftist brought marxism into universities and radicalized the field of education in the 70's (pic 1) and then brought in Postmodern feminist ideas and critical race theory in the 80's and 90's. (pic 2)

5/ Teachers who should be teaching kids to read, write, and count, are being told to teach children Marxism, Postmodern feminism, and Critical Race Theory.

which is why teaching resources constantly talk about diversity, race, and whiteness...even for teaching MATH

6/ This all started with Paulo Freire, a Brazilian Marxist who said the purpose of education is to teach people how they are being oppressed using Marxist political theory. Having politically awareness inline with Marxist theory was what he called "critical consciousness."

7/ When Freire first wrote in the 60's and 70's his work was ignored, but in the early 80's radical scholars began to use it and Henry Giroux brought Freire's work into mainstream education colleges, particularly Freire's theory of pedagogy (method and practice of teaching)...

8/ Giroux Took Freire's ideas and in his 1985 wrote a book which he dedicated to Freire and in which he said that the central theme underlying his book was that pedagogy (teaching methods) ought to become more political. Giroux was set to politicize the classroom...

9/ But in doing so Giroux added something to the mix. When Giroux started out he was a neo-Marxist who thought the Marxist theory of teaching (that all teachers should teach according to Marxist ideology) was correct. So he says in his book "teachers as Intellectuals:

10/ Eventually Giroux makes his big move and brings postmodernism into the mix. Postmodernism said science and reason weren't objectively true, and the idea that science gives us knowledge is a thinly veiled power move meant to give power to white, western ways of thinking.

11/ Now, just in case you think that these guys are just a coupe of fringe lunatics, let me show you this: One way to measure academic influence is with citations (the number of times your work gets mentioned by other academics). The more citations, the greater the influence.

12/ So, lets compare Giroux and Freire to other famous Scholars for context
Jordan Peterson has 13,381
Isaac Newton has 27,143
Albert Einstein has 131,459
Richard Dawkins has 88,079
Charles Darwin Has 184,507

Meanwhile Paulo Freire has....𝟜𝟙𝟙,𝟡𝟠𝟘

13/ You are reading that correctly: The Marxist who said the primary goal of teaching is to bring radical left wing politics into elementary school classrooms has more citations then Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin COMBINED. Don't worry it gets worse.

14/ Once it became acceptable to bring radical politics into the classroom professors who brought wanted to bring radical politics into classrooms began to get hired all over the place.
Rochelle Gutierrez' entire career is built on bringing radical identity politics into...MATH:

15/ Not only is Rochelle Gutierrez bringing radical politics into math class, she (like Henry Giroux) doesn't think Math is objective. That means she isn't even trying to get to absolute truth and she thinks the idea that math can solve problems is a fallacy.

See for yourself:

16/ And that is how you get the creation of a college textbook that has as it's goal teaching Social justice (AKA, wokeness) during Math class.

Don't worry, it gets even worse then that

17/ Christopher Dubbs wrote a paper where he suggests, and I'm not kidding, teaching grade 5 kids to challenge the structure of marriage by appealing to race, gender, and sexuality. He also thinks "queering" math (making math queer) can provide kids with an alternative reality.

18/ That's the environment our elementary school teachers are being trained in. This is why we have teachers who won't teach the proper curriculum, instead substituting their own curriculum and teach children to be left wing activists rather then the date of America's founding

19/ Want to fight back?

Go to school board meetings, that's where policy and curriculum choices get made.
Vote/run in school board elections so you can make those choices.
ORGANIZE the other parents to help you, so there's strength in numbers

it's hard work, and it takes time

20/ Politics in the classroom is nonsense. Time to put a stop to it.

/fin

QuoteThe Great Silencing of America and the Hallmarks of Woke Totalitarianism

Introduction

When Francis Fukuyama wrote his seminal article, "The End of History" in 1989, in which he stated that liberal democracy would be the world's final form of governance, he was proclaiming the end of the era of competing alternative ideologies, even the end of ideology itself. Other forms of rule, especially those totalitarian forms of the left and right, had been discredited by becoming the losers of history itself, leaving liberal democracy to stand alone as the default, uncontested form. He could not have anticipated (...)

In the years following the publication of Fukuyama's article, as globalization took hold and liberal democracy transmorphed into neoliberal oligarchy (...) Thus was the way paved for the return of contending ideologies of all forms, not merely in the world but in our own country. The fall of the ideology of freedom, at the core of liberal democracy, allowed for an interpretation of American history in which representative government had failed to survive its own regressive decay and devolution into a semi-liberal, semi-authoritarian oligarchy. This, in turn, paved the way for avowedly illiberal, even more regressive ideologies antithetical to freedom, and explicitly embracing unfreedom, to rebound with great force, even in the United States.

(...) Liberal democratic America saw both communists and fascists, and many cult-like enterprises large and small, but never did any of them become so powerful as to so completely strangle the public discourse, or to so credibly demand absolute obedience to its core tenets from the entire mass populace, with such totality, as the ideology today known as Wokeness.

We argue that Wokeness is a totalitarian ideology and movement analogous to old-style Communism and Fascism, totalizing mid-century cults such as Scientology, and the present-day totalitarian Islamism of ISIS. If we are to preclude the rise of this new totalitarian form of governance in our country as the successor to the failed neoliberal oligarchical state we have now, it is necessary that we act resolutely while it is still possible to divert it from taking up the central position in our long-term individual and collective futures.

(...) While healthy, functioning democracies will automatically repel and reject them outright as preposterous and immediately relegate them to the fringes of the political discourse, in those spaces where Wokeness has taken hold, not only in the United States but throughout the Western world, we no longer have healthy, functioning democracies.

Wokeness is deep into the process of filling the void with objectives and methodologies that bear the classic hallmarks of totalitarianism. (...)

Hallmark #1: Legitimacy and Authority Based on the Arbitrary Dichotomization of the Subject Populace

Wokeness is nothing less than a project to unilaterally tear down, and to re-structure, the entirety of our human environment—this includes all society, culture, customs, ethics, and politics in the United States and across the Western world—to fall into alignment with whatever arbitrary contours it desires. What it desires is to get rid of all of Western civilization, past, present, and future, which it re-names "Whiteness"—the original sin of Woke doctrine, and to which it attaches its own re-defined adjective "racist"—and replace it with "Wokeness," characterized first and foremost by its own re-defined attribute of "anti-racist," hence, "anti-Whiteness."

These desiderata are admittedly subjective and whimsical, avowedly based on feelings and desires, placing Wokeness in alignment with a philosophically postmodern, pre-Enlightenment mindset. The Woke legions explicitly disclaim the philosophy of rational objectivity, which is denounced as a Woke-defined "racist," therefore "white" philosophy. Its linguistic architecture, lack of an individualistic leadership structure, and determination to tear down of enemy (Western civilizational and older) dichotomies (e.g., men and women) and ethical systems rely heavily on and trace back to postmodernism. As a form of poststructuralism, postmodernism abhors all fixed dichotomies and structures generally. Despite its postmodern origins, Wokeness's construction of its own rigid dichotomies and other structures contains a distinct, but borrowed, 20th-century modernist component. At the same time, its endeavor to establish its arbitrary, rigidly-structured form of governance without trying to cover up the latter's arbitrary character by asserting some basis for itself in objective rationality, as 20th-century communism, fascism, and even Scientology tried to do, is more akin to the pre-modern totalitarianism of ISIS.

Wokeness, in its arrogance and attitude of unchallengeable self-righteousness, instead of molding itself to fit the needs of Western civilization as it finds it, claims, and then exercises, the right and authority to systematically re-design it and every individual in it in whatever manner it wishes. It does not negotiate its demands of us; it simply executes them, and it does so with both a singular sense of urgency and a peculiar intensity of focus.

(...)

Historical communism, an ideology organized around a class-based dichotomy relating to the ownership of the economic means of production, placed workers in the honored group category, and the bourgeoisie, that is, capitalists and the owners of capital, in the dishonored group. Historical fascism grounded itself in race- and ethnicity-based dichotomies: Aryans constituted the honored group, Jews constituted the dishonored group, while non-Aryan foreigners were cast as inferior out-group members. ISIS, constituted on a religious dichotomy, has Sunni Muslims as its honored group, with Shi'ite Muslims, who are considered heretics, and all other disbelievers as members of dishonored groups, collectively denounced as kufar (infidels). The cult of Scientology, basing itself on a non-religious, complex, abstract belief system, holds those who accept that architecture as their own to be in the honored group and those who refuse in the dishonored group; it also explicitly requires the members of its in-group to cut all ties, even family ties, with the disbelievers beyond its invisible walls. Today, the Woke claim to authority is being constituted on the grounds of race-, color-, ethnicity-, and sex-based dichotomies, with its honored and dishonored groups constructed explicitly around them.

Therefore, whereas the classification of the populace, and the denial of equal status under the law based on ascribed categories (i.e., attributes given at birth) were in the latter stages of being phased out in the United States and the other liberal democracies as the 20th century pressed on, Wokeness, as a 21st century successor ideology, has set out to deeply re-instill them in accordance with its own self-avowedly subjective priorities. As an ideology and as a movement, it fully adheres to the totalitarian pattern of basing its core claim to authority on the coercive re-classification of the entire subject populace into its own friend/enemy compartments. We now move to a discussion of who and what are in these different compartments.

(...)

As between the racial and sexual self-identity categories, the former holds predominance (i.e., a black man will have a higher status in Wokeness than a white male-by-birth transsexual, though the latter will still enjoy the higher status within the transsexual subcategory, whereas a black man or woman will not lose any status points as compared to a similarly-pigmented transsexual). In other words, "white privilege" trumps what Wokeness terms "cis" privilege where both are at play, and as long as one has the right skin color, the sexual attribute doesn't add anything; therefore, the Woke claim to authority is ultimately based on racial classification—indeed, this is unsurprising as it mostly arose from black liberationist feminism. Wokeness also incorporates a page from Communism into its racially-based ideology: it advocates a kind of racial socialism ("racial equity"), in which wealth would be massively re-distributed along racial lines.

Where Wokeness differs from its totalitarian predecessors is in the fact that its in-groups and out-groups are not entirely synonymous with or identical to its honored and dishonored groups. The difference is as follows: honored/dishonored group membership determines the social ranking and relative status of acceptable individuals, whereas in-group/out-group membership determines the acceptability or unacceptability of the individual person in the first place, and his right to have any status at all.

Fundamentally, then, an individual's membership in the in-group, his acceptability as a human person with a right to exist, is determined not by his race or sexual self-identity but by his acceptance of the new Woke social contract. An acceptable person is defined as someone who agrees to accept, respect, cherish, and prioritize, over and above any other values he may have had before, the Woke honored group and dishonored group classifications, and to agree to re-structure all of society, and all facets of his day-to-day life, around them. In return, these individuals are granted the right to live normal lives, or what we would call "the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This right does not exist in Wokeness by default, not even for honored group members, and consequently, individuals Wokeness deems unacceptable are not entitled to it.

(...)

Hallmark #2: An Intense Focus on Domestic Enemies

Unlike liberal democracies, totalitarian entities are characterized by an intense, unwavering focus on their declared internal (domestic) enemies, which they require in order to survive, thrive, and expand their powers. Specifically, the domestic enemies of Wokeness include, at the collective level, all dishonored group populations across the board, except those individuals among them whom Wokeness deems to be acceptable. Its highest-level enemies are those dishonored group individuals who actively and openly dissent from Woke authority, deliberately ignore or mock the mandated Woke party line, state their belief in the principles of color-blindness, free speech and association, or equal treatment under the law, or are otherwise audacious enough to proclaim these blasphemous thoughts from the rooftops, unapologetically and proudly so. Most of these people have no issue with the members of the honored groups of Wokeness per se, they just ardently disbelieve in the concept of honored and dishonored groups on its face, which for Wokeness is the highest form of crimethink.

People who express these opinions publicly with the intent to influence the views of others constitute the open dissenters from Wokeness, its dissident opposition. (...) This overt, public Unwokeness threatens Wokeness's hold on the remainder of the populace, and as such, it has to be forbidden completely: in order for Wokeness to complete its rise to power, Unwokeness, as a phenomenon, has to die.

Along these same lines, members of honored groups who publicly count themselves among the proudly Unwoke, which Wokeness would consider malicious out-group behavior—are considered traitors to Wokeness, and therefore, if the transgression is serious enough, will suffer consequences every bit as great as would any disbelieving honored group member. This makes it clear that the Woke care more about enforcing their authority than they do about honoring the individual members of honored group categories: intentional Unwoke speech or action ultimately trumps a person's honored group status. A black man in Milwaukee was executed by Woke activists for brandishing political signs supporting the wrong presidential candidate; the head of Goya Foods, of Latin American ancestry, found his company targeted by the Internet's Woke mobs for having shown up at the White House.

(...)

Neutrals from members of dishonored groups, for all intents and purposes, are placed into the enemy camp: Wokeness does not recognize, acknowledge, respect, or accept any claim of neutrality on the part of any person or group. (...) Anyone who wishes to be treated as neutral, to stay out of the fray, will find that the expectations Wokeness has of him are no different than for any other person. The would-be neutral is placed squarely into the out-group category; and if he also displays white skin coloring, he is doubly guilty, because he is also a member of a dishonored group.

(...)

Hallmark #3: Proclamation of a Complex, Ever-Changing, Mandatory Party Line

Having divided the populace into immutable honored and dishonored groups, Wokeness builds the compulsion for compliance with its preferred social hierarchies and friend/enemy classifications into everyday speech by constructing its mandatory party line script around them. This is done to force the population to speak and even think in ways that recognize, comply with, enforce, and reinforce the Woke-defined relative status, or lack thereof, of each group. Composed of myriad sets of rules, rituals, customs, and beliefs, the Woke party line stands as a grand ideological sociocultural superstructure through which Wokeness seeks to pre-determine all permissible modes of thought, speech, and interaction.

Proclaimed onto us from outside our existing political and sociocultural order, from an illegitimate, unrecognized, self-anointed authority, the party line is arbitrary, ever-intensifying, and ever-changing. It evolves in ways that allow the Woke legions to adapt, seize newly available opportunities, tighten their grip, and increase the efficiency of their enforcement mechanisms through their ongoing collective learning process. (...)

(...) Sometimes we don't even know about these revisions until they are enforced; thus we are motivated out of fear to keep ourselves constantly up to date. And since they are alien to our longstanding modes of thought, and avowedly not based in any objective rationality, there is no way for us to logically predict or infer what new absurdity will be demanded of us next.

Hallmark #4: Re-forming the Individual Based on the "New Man" Principle

In order to create conditions for the population to interact, both with one another and with the state, in accordance with Wokeness's new arbitrary human group categories, deep re-structuring of the society's self-perception is required. This starts, as it does in all totalitarian enterprises, with the deconstruction of the individual as he was and his reconstruction according to what would, in any other context, be described as the "new man" principle, thus priming him for assimilation into the Party's collective consciousness.

The "new man" approach to societal engineering starts with the presumption that the individual is unacceptable as he is and has to be reformed (that is, re-formed, which means "to form again"). The approach is then scaled up to the entire population. The compulsory re-molding of people to fit someone else's pre-determined script is illiberal on its face, incompatible with any kind of freedom or democracy. This holds doubly true for Wokeness, because its particular doctrine explicitly denounces the principle of individualism as a "racist" (enemy) form of thought. Wokeness does not want to merely break down and re-create the individual in its own image, but to explicitly de-create the individual's notion of individuality itself.

This tearing down of the individual as he was is accomplished by climbing inside the human mind and using each person's emotions and morality, together with various forms of coercion, to convince him that he needs to be re-molded. The ultimate aim is the erasure of any previously-held beliefs and the inscription into the mind of the approved script in their place. Once the slate of the mind has been cleared, indoctrination is pumped in, and the person is re-educated into the Woke self-concept, using propaganda and brainwashing, backed by a self-declared claim of moral authority and a credible threat of existential consequences for non-compliance. The subsequent carrying out by the "new man" of whatever approved script applies to his group classification represents the real-world enactment of the re-ordered set of priorities imposed from outside.

Wokeness shares with other totalitarian movements a propensity to focus sharply on the indoctrination of young people, especially the very young: children and young people are blank slates, and hence, the hard work of erasing longstanding modes of thought is not required. Consequently, Wokeness is being deeply and aggressively injected into the educational curriculum at all levels. Having escaped the university, it made a beeline directly into the K-12 school system, to the point where a great deal of the standard curriculum for all schoolchildren in the United States is now completely structured around and endowed with substance in accordance with the absurdities contained within the indoctrination protocol. The movement even has its own youth groups for honored group children, which are strictly dedicated to the inculcation of Woke ideology and include participation in Woke-sanctioned marches and demonstrations.

In adult communities, Woke re-education, which comes in the form of seminars and "training" sessions in the workplace, includes mental abuse and gaslighting of members of dishonored groups. (...)

Hallmark #5: The Emergence of the Atmospheric Fear Layer

Anyone who has ever been in a totalitarian country, including this author, who has spent considerable time in a number of them, will keenly remember the existence of a layer of tension that is always present, not in the background, but in the foreground. The vibe of baseline tension permeates to the core atmosphere of the interhuman environment, not just in certain kinds of interactions, but in all of them, on a collective, societywide basis. It is created by the background existence of the totalitarian authority, its ever-watchful eyes, the pervasiveness of its enforcements, and the severity of its punishments. It forces every person, every time he steps out of his house, and sometimes even within it, i.e., around his own children, and especially around his computer, to mind the integrity of the compartment between his free internal thoughts that live inside his head and his unfree external behavior out in the world. It requires every person, as he conducts his normal daily interactions with others, to always take great care with every word or silence, every action or non-action, to hew correctly and with sufficient enthusiasm to the mandated party line.

(...)

When everyone is walking eggshells not some of the time, but all of the time, when everyone is afraid of making a mistake, of speaking the wrong word or not speaking the right one, of forgetting to say something when it is required, or of inadvertently doing or saying anything that could be interpreted, correctly or incorrectly, as a "microaggression" against a Woke disciple or any member of an honored group, this is the sort of material out of which the totalitarian fear layer is brought into existence. Every active dissenter from Wokeness feels its tensile force already, whether consciously or subconsciously, in the rapidly increasing tightness of the demands this alien doctrine is now imposing on us, and the life-altering consequences of non-compliance with or ignorance of Woke expectations. There will come a time when its presence will be undeniable, when the entire population, even the most naive and politically inexperienced, will come to experience it for the first time. At that point, as Wokeness enters the mature phase of its development, it will fast be approaching the peak of its powers, and all but impossible to oppose or defeat.

The emergence of the fear layer, concurrently with the sudden irruption of Woke doctrines and enforcement protocols into the mainstream of public life, confirms beyond any doubt that Wokeness as a movement is not consent-based, it is power-based. Its authority is not requested, demanded, or solicited; it is imposed. Submission to its rules and repetitive declarations of allegiance and adherence to it are absolutely compulsory and are a part of the movement's ritual. Power is exclusive to the Woke, but that power may be rescinded from any person at any moment, on any arbitrary basis, especially from members of dishonored groups.

Hallmark #6: The Cancellation of Public Discourse and Conscientious Objection

Those who are sufficiently Awake to the fact of Woke power in the here and now can see that at the level of both people and ideas, it's purge night in America. Purging is purification: Wokeness is collectivist, and Wokeness itself represents the new Collective its in-groups are building. The right to dissent, in contrast, belongs to an individualist value system (...)

To achieve full power, and to signify the passing and death of the country slated for cancellation, Wokeness would have to become capable of officially retiring the American flag and national anthem from all public institutions, buildings, venues, and events, just as it has already retired American history and Western civilization from the greater part of our children's classrooms. It is already trying to re-structure America's founding date around its own categories (i.e., through its 1619 Project), and weaken our national holidays (e.g., Columbus Day, Fourth of July) with a view to ultimately replacing them, and so forth, in order to artificially place their honored/dishonored group classifications at the center of our national memory. A country emptied of its established history is not a country; such a country will find that its once-cherished monuments celebrating that history will automatically take on the features of zombie symbols and become even easier to pull down than they are already.

(...)

The purge extends from the realm of American values, symbols, and laws to actual living people who do not wish to live under the Woke value system or be subject to its social contract. Central to Wokeness's totalitarian form, even prior to having taken official power of the country itself, is its conduct of active human purges, that is, search and destroy missions against the lives of individuals it deems unacceptable, and against the basic rights of people it has assigned to dishonored group categories.

Today, instead of the unacceptable individual being condemned to a lifetime of forced labor in a gulag or a re-education camp, or forever disappeared by the secret police, he is handed a life sentence of "cancellation." (...)

Wokeness purges disobedience not only from the national discourse, but from any participation in social, cultural, economic, and political life at all. In most cases, it doesn't resort to the crude tools of direct physical violence, but instead wields the power of the torch-bearing mob—combined with the silencing levers of the Woke Silicon Valley technology elite—against its victims individually. No single person acting alone could hope to defend himself from the oncoming tidal wave populated by the small contributions of so many people to his demise. Thus is the energy of the Woke Internet mob actively mobilized and leveraged to deny the unacceptable person not only the right to participate in the public discourse, but also the permission to earn a living, by also targeting his employer with accusations of guilt by association. Cancelled individuals and their associates are not entitled, in the judgement of Wokeness, to the right to live a normal and peaceful life free from threats or acts of economic sanction, bodily injury, or death.

(...)

Cancellation may not be physically painful or terminal, but its finality is just as great and its objective is the same as it was for the totalitarians of times past; it is simply more refined and requires fewer resources, while being just as effective in accomplishing its goal. The objective in all cases is to silence and excommunicate unacceptable individuals from society and the economy so they cannot enjoy the legitimacy of their own existence, the credibility of their views, or the ability to influence others. This has the effect of appearing to make the speaking of unacceptable thought realistically impossible, and of effectively deterring others from adopting a position of dissent. However, in a number of European countries, Wokeness has also gained a level of influence over the state such that people are being sent to jail for exhibiting Unwokeness in public. Because the First Amendment to the US Constitution is already in its crosshairs, similar penal outcomes for unacceptable speech would clearly be forthcoming in a future United States of Woke.

(...)

Quoteformerly a professor at a major Western university, holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy, and as an intellectual generalist, is peer-review published in several separate fields of study that would fall within both the humanities and the hard sciences. The author is also world-travelled and multilingual, having spent time in more than two dozen countries; this includes both democratic countries and others that are universally recognized as authoritarian or totalitarian.

QuoteI Refuse to Stand By While My Students Are Indoctrinated
Children are afraid to challenge the repressive ideology that rules our school. That's why I am.
   
I am a teacher at Grace Church High School in Manhattan. Ten years ago, I changed careers when I discovered how rewarding it is to help young people explore the truth and beauty of mathematics. I love my work.

As a teacher, my first obligation is to my students. But right now, my school is asking me to embrace "antiracism" training and pedagogy that I believe is deeply harmful to them and to any person who seeks to nurture the virtues of curiosity, empathy and understanding.   

"Antiracist" training sounds righteous, but it is the opposite of truth in advertising. (...)

I know that by attaching my name to this I'm risking not only my current job but my career as an educator, since most schools, both public and private, are now captive to this backward ideology. But witnessing the harmful impact it has on children, I can't stay silent.

My school, like so many others, induces students via shame and sophistry to identify primarily with their race before their individual identities are fully formed. Students are pressured to conform their opinions to those broadly associated with their race and gender and to minimize or dismiss individual experiences that don't match those assumptions. The morally compromised status of "oppressor" is assigned to one group of students based on their immutable characteristics. In the meantime, dependency, resentment and moral superiority are cultivated in students considered "oppressed."

All of this is done in the name of "equity," but it is the opposite of fair. In reality, all of this reinforces the worst impulses we have as human beings: our tendency toward tribalism and sectarianism that a truly liberal education is meant to transcend.

(...) I was informed by the head of the high school that my philosophical challenges had caused "harm" to students, given that these topics were "life and death matters, about people's flesh and blood and bone." I was reprimanded for "acting like an independent agent of a set of principles or ideas or beliefs." And I was told that by doing so, I failed to serve the "greater good and the higher truth."

He further informed me that I had created "dissonance for vulnerable and unformed thinkers" and "neurological disturbance in students' beings and systems." The school's director of studies added that my remarks could even constitute harassment.

(...)

They report that, in their classes and other discussions, they must never challenge any of the premises of our "antiracist" teachings, which are deeply informed by Critical Race Theory. (...)

Every student at the school must also sign a "Student Life Agreement," which requires them to aver that "the world as we understand it can be hard and extremely biased," that they commit to "recognize and acknowledge their biases when we come to school, and interrupt those biases," and accept that they will be "held accountable should they fall short of the agreement." A recent faculty email chain received enthusiastic support for recommending that we "'officially' flag students" who appear "resistant" to the "culture we are trying to establish."

When I questioned what form this resistance takes, examples presented by a colleague included "persisting with a colorblind ideology," "suggesting that we treat everyone with respect," "a belief in meritocracy," and "just silence." In a special assembly in February 2019, our head of school said that the impact of words and images perceived as racist — regardless of intent — is akin to "using a gun or a knife to kill or injure someone."

Imagine being a young person in this environment. Would you risk voicing your doubts, especially if you had never heard a single teacher question it?

(...)

The head of school responded to me that "people like (Glenn) Loury's lived experience—and therefore his derived social philosophy" made him an exception to the rule that black thinkers acknowledge structural racism as the paramount impediment in society. He added that "the moment we are in institutionally and culturally, does not lend itself to dispassionate discussion and debate," and discussing Loury's ideas would "only confuse and/or enflame students, both those in the class and others that hear about it outside of the class." He preferred I assign "mainstream white conservatives," effectively denying black students the opportunity to hear from a black professor who holds views that diverge from the orthodoxy pushed on them.

(...)

My administration says that these constraints on discourse are necessary to shield students from harm. But it is clear to me that these constraints serve primarily to shield their ideology from harm — at the cost of students' psychological and intellectual development.

(...)

QuoteI am extremely proud to publish this piece by Paul Rossi. If you are a teacher who finds yourself in a similar situation; if you want to speak out but are afraid to risk your job; if you believe that political indoctrination has no place in schools, Paul would love to hear from you.

Write to him at: [email protected]

Quoteour head of school said that the impact of words and images perceived as racist — regardless of intent — is akin to "using a gun or a knife to kill or injure someone.

QuoteOn täysin yhdentekevää mitä kirjoittaja on tarkoittanut tai ajaa takaa kirjoituksellaan, jos kirjoituksen kohteeksi joutunut/joutuneet kokevat itsensä loukatuiksi!

Quote from: zupi on 23.03.2021, 01:02:24

https://journal.fi/kasvatusjaaika/article/view/84816/47404 (https://journal.fi/kasvatusjaaika/article/view/84816/47404)

QuoteMiksi meidän kaikkien pitäisi olla feministisiä pedagogeja

QuoteTietokirjoituksissa käydään läpi feministisen pedagogiikan taustaa: teoreettisen perustan
nähdään nivoutuvan Paulo Freiren ajatteluun ja sosiaalista oikeudenmukaisuutta tavoittelevaan
kriittiseen pedagogiikkaan. (...)

QuoteMerchants of Revolution
California's ethnic studies initiatives train children in Marxist theory—and opposition to the American system.

California public schools are embarking on a new experiment: education as social justice. (...)

This will likely come as a surprise to most California residents, who may be familiar with the movement's euphemisms—"ethnic studies," "educational equity," "culturally responsive teaching"—but do not understand the philosophical and political premises of these programs. As the state and many school districts begin to implement the state ethnic studies curriculum, however, details are emerging.

(...) The leaders, including district staff, an advisor for the state Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, and a professor from San Jose State University, encouraged teachers to inject left-wing politics into the classroom and to hide controversial materials from parents.

(...)

Next, Jorge Pacheco, president of the California Latino School Boards Association and advisor for the state Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, presented the movement's conceptual framework. Pacheco explained that the ethnic studies curriculum is based on the work of Brazilian Marxist Paulo Freire, who invented the concept of the "pedagogy of the oppressed," which holds that students must be educated to understand their oppression and develop the practical skills, or "praxis," to challenge and eventually overthrow their oppressors. Pacheco acknowledged that the Marxist underpinnings to ethnic studies "scare people away" but insisted that teachers must be "grounded in the correct politics to educate students."

(...)

What is the solution? Pacheco argues that teachers must "awaken [students] to the oppression" and lead them to "decodify" and eventually "destroy" the dominant political regime. (...) Pacheco describes this process as transforming students into "activist intellectuals" who "decodify systems of oppression" into their component parts, including "white supremacy, patriarchy, classism, genocide, private property, and God."

Teachers must be careful, though: Pacheco and the other panelists suggested that local educators hide this revolutionary pedagogy from administrators and families. "District guidelines and expectations are barriers," said one panelist. "[We] have to be extra careful about what is being said, since we can't just say something controversial now that we're in people's homes [because of remote learning]." (...)

The goal, according to the presenters, is to "develop, pilot, and refine an adaptable and scalable Ethnic Studies program design plan and curriculum that can serve as standalone courses or be integrated into core content areas." This is already happening. Last month, the California Department of Education approved the statewide curriculum, which will bring the "pedagogy of the oppressed" to schools throughout the state. But for the movement's leaders, the goal is to go further. At the end of the presentation in Santa Clara, Pacheco argued that schools should start transforming children into "activist intellectuals," beginning in first grade. "[It's] never too young," he said, arguing that educators should be "cashing in on kids' inherent empathy" in order to reshape their ideological foundations.

This is a dystopian project. As these pedagogical theories make their way into the classroom, California schools will be teaching millions of children to hate their own country. They will be oriented toward the work of "decolonizing," "deconstructing," and "dismantling" their own society. The ethnic studies activists grasp the destabilizing nature of their project—and believe that it provides them leverage for their broader political ends. During the Santa Clara presentation, Pacheco and the other instructors provided the audience with a handout quoting Freire: "Critical consciousness, they say, is anarchic. Others add that critical consciousness may lead to disorder. Some, however, confess: Why deny it? I was afraid of freedom. I am no longer afraid!" Though they are coy about their ultimate intention, the ethnic studies activists seek, at a minimum, a moral revolution—and, out of such tumults, political revolutions often follow.

California voters may not realize it, but they have installed a radical movement in the state educational bureaucracy.

QuoteBig Corporations Now Deploying Woke Ideology the Way Intelligence Agencies Do: As a Disguise
      
(...)

The British spy agency GCHQ is so aggressive, extreme and unconstrained by law or ethics that the NSA — not exactly world renowned for its restraint — often farms out spying activities too scandalous or illegal for the NSA to their eager British counterparts. (...)

But they want you to know that they absolutely adore gay people. In fact, they love the cause of LGBT equality so very much that, beginning on May 17, 2015 — International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia — they started draping their creepy, UFO-style headquarters in the colors of the rainbow flag. The prior year, in 2014, they had merely raised the rainbow flag in front of their headquarters, but in 2015, they announced, "we wanted to make a bold statement to show the nation we serve how strongly we believe in this."

Who could possibly be opposed to an institution that offers such noble gestures and works behind such a pretty facade? How bad could the GCHQ really be if they are so deeply committed to the rights of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and trans people? (...)

Again, this does not make the CIA perfect — sure, they make some mistakes and engage in some actions that are worthy of criticism — but to combat real evil, you do not go protest at Langley. They are engaged in important work combating homophobia, racism and misogyny. Thus, real warriors against evil look not to them but instead go searching online for the Boogaloo Boys and boomers on Facebook who post Q-Anon and other problematic memes. That is where your focus should remain if you want to root out the real threats.

Large corporations have obviously witnessed the success of this tactic — to prettify the face of militarism and imperialism with the costumes of social justice — and are now weaponizing it for themselves. As a result, they are becoming increasingly aggressive in their involvement in partisan and highly politicized debates, always on the side of the same causes of social justice which entities of imperialism and militarism have so effectively co-opted.

Corporations have always sought to control the legislative process and executive branch, usually with much success. (...)

But they are now going far beyond clandestine corporatist control of the government for their own interests. They are now becoming increasingly powerful participants in highly polarizing and democratic debates. In the wake of the George Floyd killing last summer, it became virtually obligatory for every large corporation to proclaim support for the #BlackLivesMatter agenda even though many, if not most, had never previously evinced the slightest interest in questions of racial justice or policing.

One of the very few companies that refused to do so was the Silicon Valley-based cryptocurrency exchange platform called Coinbase (...) And exactly two months after, the notoriously censorious and politicized "tech reporters" of The New York Times punished the company for its heresy of neutrality with a lengthy article depicting Coinbase as a bastion of racism and toxic bigotry (...)

Ever since, large corporations are diving into numerous other political debates with great vigor and force (...) The Wall Street Journal on Sunday reported that "dozens of chief executives and other senior leaders gathered on Zoom this weekend to plot what several said big businesses should do next about new voting laws under way in Texas and other states." The campaign against these laws includes not just corporate giants but also the nation's largest and richest corporate law firms.

(...) "Wall Street is putting its money behind Democrat Barack Obama for president," reported Reuters in 2008, while they did the same overwhelmingly in 2020 to support Biden over Trump (just as Democrats have increasingly become the party of affluent suburbanites, they are also increasingly supported by the wealthiest corporate and tech power centers).

The farcical nature of all of this is obvious. Just as it is laughable that the CIA and GCHQ care about social justice, feminism, and racial diversity as they bomb and subvert the rest of the world in ways that contradict all of those professed values, the idea that corporate giants who use sweatshops, slave labor, mass layoffs and abuse of their workforce care about any of these causes would make any rational person suffocate on the stench of their insincerity.

(...) when giant corporations use their unparalleled economic power to override that process — by forcing state and local governments to rescind or reject laws they would otherwise support due to fear of corporate punishment — then the system, by definition, far more resembles an oligarchy than a democracy. Rod Dreher, writing on Monday in The American Conservative, advanced arguments and concerns that were once the province of the left:

    This is progressive oligarchy. Woke Capitalism is a threat to democracy. As I write about in Live Not By Lies, these same people are eventually going to eagerly collaborate with government to create the Social Credit System necessary to make this country controllable.

    When is it going to occur to people on the Left that Big Business is doing all this because it knows that if it makes the right moves on cultural issues that matter to the Woke, it will be able to do whatever it wants to workers? (...)

(...)

Quote from: zupi on 14.04.2021, 12:41:35
The farcical nature of all of this is obvious. Just as it is laughable that the CIA and GCHQ care about social justice, feminism, and racial diversity as they bomb and subvert the rest of the world in ways that contradict all of those professed values, the idea that corporate giants who use sweatshops, slave labor, mass layoffs and abuse of their workforce care about any of these causes would make any rational person suffocate on the stench of their insincerity.

Quote from: zupi on 13.04.2021, 23:54:05
Kovasti peukkua tällaisille ihmisille.

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/i-refuse-to-stand-by-while-my-students (https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/i-refuse-to-stand-by-while-my-students)

QuoteI Refuse to Stand By While My Students Are Indoctrinated
Children are afraid to challenge the repressive ideology that rules our school. That's why I am.
   
(...)

My administration says that these constraints on discourse are necessary to shield students from harm. But it is clear to me that these constraints serve primarily to shield their ideology from harm — at the cost of students' psychological and intellectual development.

(...)

(...)

QuoteRe: An Update and a Parent Communication
From:
Paul Rossi
Mon, Apr 19, 2021 at 10:54 AM
To:
George P. Davison

Dear George,

I am writing in response to the letter that you sent over the weekend to my colleagues. Grace's public story — the story it is telling to the press and to its own community — has been very different from what you have told me. In light of your statement that my essay "contains glaring omissions and inaccuracies," and in support of those who will inevitably be scared into silence by seeing the price I am now paying for speaking up, I am compelled to share what you have told me in our previous conversations.

In the letter, you reaffirm that Grace's "commitment to antiracism is consistent with our identity and mission" and that "it has been at the heart of our work for years."

I believe that you share my desire to ensure that racism does not mar the experience of students at Grace. But, like me, you also expressed "grave doubts about some of the doctrinaire stuff that gets spouted at us, in the name of antiracism." When I told you "they're fighting a revolution" and "will hollow out Grace and move on to the next institution," you acknowledged that "they've hollowed out a bunch of other ones ahead of us."

You write that you "find it regrettable that Paul Rossi chose to air his grievances with the school in the press."

But as you well know, speaking publicly about this was hardly my first choice. Over the course of several years, I have made my specific concerns clear, not only to you, but to the Head of High School, and the Assistant Head. These concerns centered on the impact of this doctrinaire ideology on our students. Even when I have simply tried to expose our students to alternative points of view in the classroom, I have been repeatedly shut down. The school's response to my efforts to raise these concerns internally left me no choice but to speak about them publicly.

In the letter, you say that "the wellbeing of our community is our first priority," and that Grace cares "deeply about human dignity."

And yet you admitted to me that Grace Church is, in fact, "demonizing white people for being born," and that the school is making white students "feel less than, for nothing that they are personally responsible for."

While I cannot know for certain, I suspect that the reason you have not shared these concerns with the broader Grace community is because you know exactly what happens to people who do — it is what is happening to me right now. I understand that. It is because of the fear I see in so many people, including so many of our students, that I felt compelled to speak out even though I knew I would pay a steep price for it.

I love this school and its students, and I want to see it thrive. I want to see a renewed commitment to free expression, viewpoint diversity, and true education. And I think the public and, in particular, the Grace community deserve to know that these concerns are not mine alone.

Sincerely,
Paul

QuoteRichard Dawkins FRS FRSL (born 26 March 1941)[24] is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist, atheist thinker, and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008.

Quote from: zupi on 13.04.2021, 23:54:05
https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/i-refuse-to-stand-by-while-my-students (https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/i-refuse-to-stand-by-while-my-students)

QuoteI Refuse to Stand By While My Students Are Indoctrinated
Children are afraid to challenge the repressive ideology that rules our school. That's why I am.
   
(...)

My administration says that these constraints on discourse are necessary to shield students from harm. But it is clear to me that these constraints serve primarily to shield their ideology from harm — at the cost of students' psychological and intellectual development.

(...)

Quote2021-04-19 United Nations Human Rights Council (https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=27004&LangID=E)

Stunningly, the Report also claims that, while there might be overt acts of racism in the UK, there is no institutional racism. The Report offers no evidence for this claim

QuoteWe urge the British government to categorically reject the findings of the Report

Quote from: akez on 20.04.2021, 15:37:11
(...)
Tiktokissa, tuossa verrattomassa tietolähteessä, taannoin eräs jenkki kertoi, että heillä alkaa olla jo koko maailman paskin koulujärjestelmä. Kukaan ei opi enää mitään. (...)

QuoteArtificial Stupidity

(...)

People are all born ignorant but they are not born stupid. Much of the stupidity we see today is induced by our educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities. In a high-tech age that has seen the creation of artificial intelligence by computers, we are also seeing the creation of artificial stupidity by people who call themselves educators.

Educational institutions created to pass on to the next generation the knowledge, experience and culture of the generations that went before them have instead been turned into indoctrination centers to promote whatever notions, fashions or ideologies happen to be in vogue among today's intelligentsia.

(...)

It was once the proud declaration of many educators that "We are here to teach you how to think, not what to think." But far too many of our teachers and professors today are teaching their students what to think, about everything from global warming to the new trinity of "race, class and gender."

Even if all the conclusions with which they indoctrinate their students were 100 percent correct, that would still not be equipping students with the mental skills to weigh opposing views for themselves, in order to be prepared for new and unforeseeable issues that will arise over their lifetimes, after they leave the schools and colleges.

Many of today's "educators" not only supply students with conclusions, they promote the idea that students should spring into action because of these prepackaged conclusions-- in other words, vent their feelings and go galloping off on crusades, without either a knowledge of what is said by those on the other side or the intellectual discipline to know how to analyze opposing arguments.

When we see children in elementary schools out carrying signs in demonstrations, we are seeing the kind of mindless groupthink that causes adults to sign petitions they don't understand or-- worse yet-- follow leaders they don't understand, whether to the White House, the Kremlin or Jonestown.

A philosopher once said that the most important knowledge is knowledge of one's own ignorance. That is the knowledge that too many of our schools and colleges are failing to teach our young people.

(...) our classroom indoctrinators are getting students to think that they know after hearing only one side of an issue. It is artificial stupidity.

Quote from: zupi on 20.04.2021, 17:06:18
Oppiihan ne sen, MITÄ pitää ajatella. Thomas Sowell 11 vuotta sitten:

QuoteArtificial Stupidity
Much of the stupidity we see today is induced by our educational system, from the elementary schools to the universities. In a high-tech age that has seen the creation of artificial intelligence by computers, we are also seeing the creation of artificial stupidity by people who call themselves educators.

Quote
Hyvin pitkä postaus, sisältö:

I.   Miksi valtio haluaa kontrolloida koulutusta?
II.  Institutionalisointia kehdosta hautaan
III. Kollektiivinen yhteiskunta tarvitsee kollektiivisti koulutetut kansalaiset
IV.  Koulutus on tehokkaampi ase kuin inkvisitio
V.   Vastuuhenkilöt ja heidän motivaationsa
VI.  Toimenpidesuositukset
VII. Johtopäätös
...
Lyhyt vastaus: Eliitti edistää etujaan tuottamalla yhteiskuntaan ideologista harmoniaa valtion koulutusmonopolin avulla. Niinpä opetusohjelmiin lisätään arvojen opettamista, ja niistä vähennetään sekä itsenäisen ajattelun että hyödyllisten taitojen (matematiikka, kielioppi jne) opettamista.
...
Tehtävä on yksinkertainen: tyhmennä massat sellaiselle tasolle, että ne eivät kyseenalaista epäinhimillistä työtään korporaatioissa, eivätkä etenkään aloita omia bisneksiä, joista olisi uhkaa tai haittaa eliitille.
...
    A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers.... The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.

– Aldous Huxley, forward to "Brave New World," 1946 edition

Quote from: Lalli IsoTalo on 28.08.2011, 23:49:34

Quote from: Loppuasukas on 28.08.2011, 23:11:15
Kuinka koulut tyrkyttävät haitallisia mokuarvoja?

Opetusohjelman mukaisesti.

QuoteVoimassa olevassa opetusohjelmassa puolestaan todetaan, että "perusopetuksen arvopohjana ovat ihmisoikeudet, tasa-arvo, demokratia, luonnon monimuotoisuuden ja ympäristön elinkelpoisuuden säilyttäminen sekä monikulttuurisuuden hyväksyminen."

-- http://www.kaleva.fi/uutiset/rasismi-kitketaan-tyvesta/907524

QuoteThe phrase "I'M SO EXHAUSTED" in upper class intellectual professions comes from Social Justice activism and belongs to the same constellation of concepts as:

-emotional labor
-do the work
-triggered
-trauma
-self-care
-white fragility

So, "I'm so exhausted":

A Thread

When upper-class professionals performatively say "I'm so exhausted" they aren't saying "I did lot of physical labor today and now I'm tired"

The "exhausted" in the phrase "I'm so exhausted" is  exhaustion in terms of what woke Social Justice activists call *EMOTIONAL LABOR*

Once we know what "emotional labor" is explaining why people say "I'm so exhausted" will be simple

"Emotional labor" originally referred to having to manage one's emotions in a particular way as a part of one's work requirements

IE: being required to be polite to customers

This idea was pulled from it's original context and the meaning was expanded to include every day social interactions. Thus "emotional labor" was used to analyze the effort required to manage emotions, both others and your own, in every day relationships and social situations.

The term "emotional labor" was then co-opted by Social Justice Activists who claimed that since society was fundamentally oppressive, oppressed minorities had to do emotional and social labor just to cope with the unjust and unfair social expectations of an oppressive society.

The idea is that society places social and emotional expectations on people which force them to engage in certain social and emotional behavior whether they want to or not. According to Social Justice Activism, keeping up with these expectations is a type of emotional labor.

IE: feminists often claim patriarchy expects women to adopt the role of home-maker; a role requiring them to be sweet and happy while managing the behavior of both themselves and children, and this is a form of emotional labor women are unjustly expected to do, uncompensated

According to woke Social Justice, the White Male Cisgendered Patriarchy has placed its emotional and social norms on everyone. This means that unless you're a White Straight Cisgendered Male you're (allegedly) doing constant emotional labor just to cope with all the oppression

This is why:
-Being black is exhausting (pic 1)
-Being a Woman is exhausting (Pic 2)
-Being a non-binary sports fan is exhausting (Pic 3)
-Being trans is exhausting (Pic 4)

And also why:
-Being fat is exhausting (pic 1)
-Being a lesbian is exhausting (Pic 2)
-Being latinx is exhausting (Pic 3)
-Being pansexual is exhausting (Pic 4)

The idea is once you "wake up" to the fact society is forcing you into white cisgendered straight male ways of emotional and social engagement, then managing the expectations society is trying to force on you while you're trying to resist them takes a lot of emotional labor.

The thing to remember is that in the woke Social Justice worldview it isn't just the expectations which are exhausting. Being "woke" to the systems of social forces that oppress you and managing the expectations of those systems adds another layer of emotional labor...

that the woke person has to do as they dismantle the systems of oppression in society. They are "saving the world" and fixing society while managing all the toxic, patriarchal emotional responses society programmed into us...and they aren't even getting paid!!!

This is why upper-class professionals claim to be "exhausted."
When an upper-class professional says "I'M SO EXHAUSTED" they are claiming to be emotionally depleted from all the work they do managing all the toxic social and emotional behavior going on around them....

Both activists and upper-class professionals claim the mantle of both the victim ("I do this for free while not being compensated and I'm being oppressed") and the hero ("I'm managing all these people's emotions while fixing society and bringing about Social Justice")

Thus being exhausted is a sign someone is:
1. aware of how society *really* works and are resisting the system unlike all you sheeple.
2. Managing the toxicity of everyone around them while fixing the oppression.

Not all heroes wear capes, but all of them are exhausted.

As such "I'M SO EXHAUSTED" serves as a signal that someone is both aware of the systemic oppression, understands it, feels the weight of it, and is resisting it while managing all the toxic not-woke people who are unconsciously spewing their non-woke toxicity everywhere...

This is why it is becoming common. If you aren't exhausted, then either you don't know whats going on (you're not woke to the system, you're asleep) or you're not resisting the oppression and fixing it... if you were, you would be exhausted....just like them.

I realize there are exceptions (IE, if someone says "I just lifted weights for three hours and I'm so exhausted" they are likely just tired) but in activist and media circles this is what is going on, and this is what it means.

Thank you for reading.

/fin

QuoteThe Courage of Our Convictions
How to fight critical race theory

Critical race theory is fast becoming America's new institutional orthodoxy. Yet most Americans have never heard of it—and of those who have, many don't understand it. This must change. We need to know what it is so we can know how to fight it.

To explain critical race theory, it helps to begin with a brief history of Marxism. Originally, the Marxist Left built its political program on the theory of class conflict. Karl Marx believed that the primary characteristic of industrial societies was the imbalance of power between capitalists and workers. The solution to that imbalance, according to Marx, was revolution: the workers would eventually gain consciousness of their plight, seize the means of production, overthrow the capitalist class, and usher in a new socialist society.

During the twentieth century, a number of regimes underwent Marxist-style revolutions, and each ended in disaster. Socialist governments in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba, and elsewhere racked up a body count of nearly 100 million people. They are remembered for gulags, show trials, executions, and mass starvations. In practice, Marx's ideas unleashed man's darkest brutalities.

By the mid-1960s, Marxist intellectuals in the West had begun to acknowledge these failures. They recoiled at revelations of Soviet atrocities and came to realize that workers' revolutions would never occur in Western Europe or the United States, which had large middle classes and rapidly improving standards of living. Americans in particular had never developed a sense of class consciousness or class division. Most Americans believed in the American dream—the idea that they could transcend their origins through education, hard work, and good citizenship.

But rather than abandon their political project, Marxist scholars in the West simply adapted their revolutionary theory to the social and racial unrest of the 1960s. Abandoning Marx's economic dialectic of capitalists and workers, they substituted race for class and sought to create a revolutionary coalition of the dispossessed based on racial and ethnic categories.

(...)

Critical race theory is an academic discipline, formulated in the 1990s and built on the intellectual framework of identity-based Marxism. Relegated for many years to universities and obscure academic journals, it has increasingly become the default ideology in our public institutions over the past decade. It has been injected into government agencies, public school systems, teacher training programs, and corporate human-resources departments, in the form of diversity-training programs, human-resources modules, public-policy frameworks, and school curricula.

Its supporters deploy a series of euphemisms to describe critical race theory, including "equity," "social justice," "diversity and inclusion," and "culturally responsive teaching." Critical race theorists, masters of language construction, realize that "neo-Marxism" would be a hard sell. Equity, on the other hand, sounds non-threatening and is easily confused with the American principle of equality. But the distinction is vast and important. Indeed, critical race theorists explicitly reject equality—the principle proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence, defended in the Civil War, and codified into law with the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. To them, equality represents "mere nondiscrimination" and provides "camouflage" for white supremacy, patriarchy, and oppression.

In contrast to equality, equity as defined and promoted by critical race theorists is little more than reformulated Marxism. In the name of equity, UCLA law professor and critical race theorist Cheryl Harris has proposed suspending private property rights (umm, et omista mitään mutta olet onnellinen...), seizing land and wealth, and redistributing them along racial lines (helvetin hölmöt, kaikki "jaetaan" huipulla olevalle yhdelle promillelle). Critical race guru Ibram X. Kendi, who directs the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, has proposed the creation of a federal Department of Antiracism. This department would be independent of (i.e., unaccountable to) the elected branches of government, and would have the power to nullify, veto, or abolish any law at any level of government and curtail the speech of political leaders and others deemed insufficiently "antiracist."

One practical result of the creation of such a department would be the overthrow of capitalism, since, according to Kendi, "In order to truly be antiracist, you also have to truly be anti-capitalist." In other words, identity is the means; Marxism is the end.

An equity-based form of government would mean the end not only of private property but also of individual rights, equality under the law, federalism, and freedom of speech. (...)

I'm just one investigative journalist, but I've developed a database of more than 1,000 of these stories. When I say that critical race theory is becoming the operating ideology of our public institutions, I am not exaggerating—from the universities to bureaucracies to K-12 school systems, critical race theory has permeated the collective intelligence and decision-making process of American government, with no sign of slowing down.

This is a revolutionary change. When originally established, these government institutions were presented as neutral, technocratic, and oriented toward broadly held perceptions of the public good. Today, under the increasing sway of critical race theory and related ideologies, they are being turned against the American people. This isn't limited to the permanent bureaucracy in Washington, D.C., but is true as well of institutions in the states—even red states. It is spreading to county public health departments, small midwestern school districts, and more. This ideology will not stop until it has devoured all of our institutions.

So far, attempts to halt the encroachment of critical race theory have been ineffective. There are a number of reasons for this.

First, too many Americans have developed an acute fear of speaking up about social and political issues, especially those involving race. According to a recent Gallup poll, 77 percent of conservatives are afraid to share their political beliefs publicly. (...)

Second, critical race theorists have constructed their argument like a mousetrap. Disagreement with their program becomes irrefutable evidence of a dissenter's "white fragility," "unconscious bias," or "internalized white supremacy." (...)

Fourth and finally, the writers and activists who have had the courage to speak out against critical race theory have tended to address it on the theoretical level, pointing out the theory's logical contradictions and dishonest account of history. These criticisms are worthy and good, but they move the debate into the academic realm—friendly terrain for proponents of critical race theory. They fail to force defenders of this revolutionary ideology to defend the practical consequences of their ideas in the realm of politics.

No longer simply an academic matter, critical race theory has become a tool of political power. To borrow a phrase from the Marxist theoretician Antonio Gramsci, it is fast achieving cultural hegemony in America's public institutions. It is driving the vast machinery of the state and society. If we want to succeed in opposing it, we must address it politically at every level.

(...)

There are three parts to a successful strategy to defeat the forces of critical race theory: governmental action, grassroots mobilization, and an appeal to principle.

(...)

On the grassroots level, a multiracial and bipartisan coalition is emerging to fight critical race theory. Parents are mobilizing against racially divisive curricula in public schools and employees are increasingly speaking out against Orwellian reeducation in the workplace. When they see what is happening, Americans are naturally outraged that critical race theory promotes three ideas—race essentialism, collective guilt, and neo-segregation—that violate the basic principles of equality and justice. Anecdotally, many Chinese-Americans have told me that, having survived the Cultural Revolution in their former country, they refuse to let the same thing happen here.

(...)

Above all, we must have courage, the fundamental virtue required in our time: courage to stand and speak the truth, courage to withstand epithets, courage to face the mob, and courage to shrug off the scorn of elites. When enough of us overcome the fear that currently prevents so many from speaking out, the hold of critical race theory will begin to slip. And courage begets courage. It's easy to stop a lone dissenter; it's much harder to stop 10, 20, 100, 1,000, 1 million, or more who stand up together for the principles of America. Truth and justice are on our side. If we can muster the courage, we will win.

https://www.city-journal.org/how-to-fight-critical-race-theory (https://www.city-journal.org/how-to-fight-critical-race-theory)

QuoteI've wondered if it's worth sharing "my story." I'm a pretty private person so it feels weird to share. But I think it's worth it bc we all need encouragement that ordinary ppl can do something about what's happening to our country. So, why do I talk about Woke stuff?

The Woke Mob: my survival story

My husband and I co-founded a justice-oriented non-profit org 11 years ago. At the time, we knew nothing about Critical Social Justice or Critical Theory. Our motivation was to address disparities in mental health care. 1/

We'd learned that lay people (ppl without clinical training) made up the majority of trauma care providers around the world working with vulnerable populations (refugees, human trafficking survivors, etc). We wanted to help equip those lay people with good resources. 2/

We hired clinically trained mental health professionals to develop our curriculum, oversee MEL, and run the international training program. Everything went great for about 7 years. We got accolades from all the right people in academia and partnered with orgs in 50+ countries. 3/

Then a few years ago we noticed a tone shift among our program staff. They became hyper-critical of *everything.* As Executive Director, my husband felt he was always on trial. Every word and action was scrutinized. We couldn't figure out where this was coming from. 4/

We noticed shared rhetoric among the staff. Terms we heard often:
"systems of power and oppression"
"hegemony"
"marginalized identities"
"intersections"
"centering"
"deconstruct"
"knowledges"
"normativity"
Didn't understand the ideology behind it, started doing some reading. 5/

Then the open letters started. The letters always went to everyone in the org (from the graphic designer to the governing board), they always asserted vaguely that the organization was "causing harm," and they always ended with demands. We were alarmed and confused. 6/

We began having all-org sessions trying to discern what was happening and what was needed. It was quickly apparent there were no specific actions or incidents that could be deemed harmful. The accusations were always vague and abstract, about "identities", "systems," etc. 7/

What also became apparent quickly was they didn't want to resolve any real harm. They wanted control of the organization. They stated explicitly my husband was incapable of running an org that addresses trauma (an org he founded!) bc he's straight, white, male, and Christian. 8/

That's when I learned to fight. I'd been doing my homework for a while. Thanks to people like @NeilShenvi
, @ConceptualJames
, @wokal_distance
, @WokeTemple
, @D_B_Harrison
and @realchrisrufo
, I knew what we were facing. It was an attempted woke subversion of the organization. 9/

I wrote organizational position papers on how Critical Social Justice compromised our work by being in direct conflict with a number of our organizational commitments, namely, being evidence-based, valuing the individual, cultural humility, and allowing for true diversity. 10/

Maybe I shouldn't be proud of it, but I also learned to use their woke rules against them. When a staff member said I couldn't speak to a topic bc I'm straight, I told her it was wrong of her to assume about my sexuality just bc I'm married to a man. She immediately groveled. 11/

After some months, when it was clear to them we wouldn't budge, the ones making demands left "on moral grounds," accusing us of every phobia and calling the org "white supremacist." We've always partnered with ppl of every ethnicity, creed and identity, so this is laughable. 12/

Having survived an attempted power grab and character assassination by a woke mob, I'll say it's painful to be mistreated by ppl you trusted. But if you care more about maintaining your integrity than what people think or say about you, you'll emerge with your dignity intact. 13/

Don't apologize for vague accusations of "harm." It's not a fair fight. They don't want dialogue. Expose their inconsistencies - show how their demands won't achieve what they claim to care about (helping the poor, etc). It'll require some reading and a lot of courage. 14/

If you don't fight this nonsense now, wherever it's showing up in your community, there'll be nothing good, true, or beautiful to defend soon. We will be ruled by lies and power while being told we're progressing toward truth and justice. 15/

Open war is upon us, there is no "safe" any more. Choose which kind of "unsafe" you want. Fighting lies is always preferable to being ruled by them. I believe they can be defeated. I believe the truth will prevail.

Thanks for reading my story, I'd love to hear yours. 16/16

QuoteThe Illiberalism of Social Justice

Social Justice is a dangerous, illiberal ideology that is taking over society. Although often associated with "liberalism" in the United States, it is explicitly anti-liberal. (...)

One of the easiest ways to understand how illiberal Social Justice can be is available to anyone who attempts to criticize it. Those who criticize Social Justice are not thanked for helping to improve its tenets. Rather, they're called bigots, homophobes, Nazis, grifters, misogynists, or, the trump card meant to silence all conversation: racists.

Proving its commitment to illiberalism even further, when the accused denies these accusations and demands evidence to substantiate claims that they're racist, this denial is taken as evidence of guilt. To ask for evidence of racism is considered a form of willful ignorance of racism, according to Social Justice. Then, when the accused points out the obvious, that name calling isn't an argument and they'd like to have a conversation about the manifestation of Social Justice that led them to be accused in the first place, nobody comes forward to converse. In the Social Justice ideological paradigm, conversing with someone who's been accused of being a racist, sexist, or bigot would be acting in complicity with racism. (There's even a word in their lexicon for this, "platforming.") So conversation is a priori ruled out.

But Social Justice's illiberalism is actually far worse. In many situations, because nobody comes forward to speak with the accused—in spite of the fact that he has pleaded with adherents and enforcers of Social Justice ideology to have a conversation—a narrative is then constructed that paints the accused as someone who does not want to have a conversation with anyone with whom he disagrees. Moreover, this is often reframed as the accused being unwilling to have a conversation about racism!

And this is exactly what has happened to me. (...)

The unwillingness of Social Justice adherents to speak with me—or others who challenge their doctrines—does not stop them from accusing me of not wanting to speak with them. In fact, it escalates those accusations. This is because the primary method of Social Justice is to accuse, whether true or false, sensible or insensible, and to manipulate everything that follows into further accusations.

Sadly, this is exactly the response one would predict given that Social Justice ideology is highly aggressive, intrinsically political, and completely in conflict with science, evidence, and reason. If it were backed by science, evidence, and reason, science evidence and reason would be presented in conversation and there would be no need to call anyone names or accuse people who want to have conversations of not wanting to have conversations. The Social Justice canons would also not need to build an infrastructure that insulates itself from criticism and uses name calling and accusation as the primary tool to dispense its ideological enemies. Rather, it would encourage dialogue, conversation, and even debate. Instead, it sees discourse not as an effective means for determining truth but as yet another political project to oppress people.

Social Justice cannot continue to be taken seriously on its own terms, which it has literally made up. It must be taken seriously in terms of the threat it poses to liberal and civil society, which it is actively undermining and seeks to destroy. (...)

QuoteA Manifesto for the Based

When Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago, gave in his Noble Lecture the credo, "Let the lie come into the world. Let it even triumph. But not through me," that was based. Not participating in transparent lies or mass delusion is based. Doing so against the madness of the following crowd is based. Nearly everything that it means to be based is either contained within or predicated upon this one trait of character.

Solzhenitsyn wrote those words as a result of his observations living in what may have been the most brutal tyranny of human history: Stalin's USSR. That simplest of refusals—the refusal to lie on command, or even to fit in—is, in the end, the summary of his observations of what kind of people had what it took to resist a totalitarian regime. Keeping your head down while you hope the unconscionable blows over, say, so you can keep your job but none of your dignity, is not based.

(...)

Though, for the moment, better conditions generally prevail in our day-to-day lives in our teetering Western liberal democratic republics, we have also found ourselves in yet another period in human history when the many millions believe—or at least pretend to believe—outright, transparent lies about the nature of reality, both social and material. What's more, our elites and the institutions they command have taken the repetition and promulgation of these lies as sure marks of both status and, believe it or not, sanity. That is, once again the lie is coming into the world, and we have been forced to ask ourselves: will it triumph?

That's an open question, and its answer depends, in turn, upon the answer to the more personal question Solzhenitsyn answered firmly in the negative. Will it come through me? The fate of the future of Western Civilization and Mankind may well hang in the balance of how that question gets answered, and by who, and how many. That is, its answer depends on how many people are willing to get based and stay that way.

The risk is in a peculiar way perverse. If lots of us get based, there's very little risk to any of us. On the other hand, if only a few of us do, the risk is immense. (...)

To me, then, there's just one option. It's time to get based and help other people get based. It's time for based nation. It's time for a based movement.

Before we begin on such an ambitious venture, however, the origin of the term "based" should be addressed forthrightly because it is profoundly limiting and, in fact, something that prevents being properly and fully based. The term arose online in talking about various ideas that might justify biological racism and referenced being unafraid to say those things because they are politically unfashionable. It arose in being intentionally, and often crudely, politically anti-correct. It arose, frankly, in crowds rightly identified as being "alt-right." One could say it has expanded from there into something mostly more commendable. (...)

Now we can begin. To be based, simply enough, begins with being willing to speak your mind and state objectively true facts about the world even when people don't like you for it. It means neither lying nor apologizing just because the crowd expects you to, least of all under the absurd implication that doing so makes you more virtuous and brave. (...)

Put another way, fitting to our contemporary circumstances, being based is the opposite of being Woke. Woke is wholly intolerant of everything but itself. It, because it is cynical of every motivation, it never acts in good faith. It brings down every mood and celebrates the worthless and the ugly so long as these take no shame in themselves for being worthless and ugly. Woke forgiveness is impossible because, to the Woke, forgiveness would justify the sin. It demands absolute conformity and tolerates no dissent. It defines hypersensitivity, elevates it as a virtue, and, as a result, is always throwing a tantrum.

Obviously, Solzhenitsyn wasn't writing about the Woke in The Gulag Archipelago, but what he was writing about was another species in the same totalitarian genus. (...)

There are, in the end, only two things that can tear such a regime down, and they are, as it happens, interrelated. They are the two most powerful weapons against tyranny in the human arsenal: telling the truth, including by refusing the lie, and laughter. Both are based, and to win both are necessary. (...)

Humor isn't necessary but is the key to being truly based. Absurdity must be exposed, and no acid is more corrosive to the absurdity of tyranny than laughter pointed in its general direction. So, while being based begins with being unapologetic in yourself and the truth, whatever anyone thinks, it does this ideally while being funny. (...)

(...)

In fact, the subversive humor of being based is what makes being based so open instead of being closed. It is by its very nature irreverent and sometimes crude, but it always punches up, as they say. (...)

To strike a more philosophical tone, being based means having common sense in a postmodern context. Like it or not, "Postmodernity" is the name for the time in which we live. It's a time of images, corporate gloss, and a certain imposed detachment from the real. (...)

To put that somewhat more seriously, the difference between being based and being Woke is the difference between laughter and shame. (...)

(...) Humor washes away the absurd in a tide of laughter and leaves behind what's real and what really matters—that's based. Shame doesn't. It just knocks everything over in its ridiculous attempt to prove that it's the only thing that isn't absurd—so not based; totally cringe, in fact. That is, humor is gentle while shame is crude, and humor is alive where shame is afraid to live. This is why the based roll with the joke. This is why the Woke laugh at nothing. It's because they have no base.

Tyranny is knocking, and we need to get based. Solzhenitsyn told us what it would take to stand up to the end of the world, and what it boils down to is being based—and being based for our times. Our times are absurd, but this doesn't diminish the threat. Still, in the end, there's nothing new under this yellow Sun, and, as ever, the truly absurd cannot possibly abide people who completely refuse to take them seriously. The future, then, belongs to the based, not to the clowns. That future is ours because the future is based.

Freedom is ours for the taking. The lies are coming into the world, and, for the moment, they have begun to triumph. Lord, though, are they funny. Being based is little more, then, than a laughing refusal to be pushed around by the preposterous. It's a refusal to go along with the crowd when the crowd has gone mad. While many people seem to realize that there is some problem, only the based realize not only that its safer and healthier to break away, but that it's also hilarious. The based aren't about to live by ridiculous lies because they'll be too busy laughing the bottom out from under them.

QuoteWhy Schools Are Teaching Our Kids "Social Justice"

(...)

The mission of Critical Social Justice, to use its right name, is to "awaken" people to the so-called "realities" of systemic oppression in society, as it defines it—thus, "woke." People who are woke are people who have been trained to see systemic oppression in a particular way, which has been outlined in an otherwise obscure branch of philosophy known as Critical Theory. Speaking formally, the Woke are people who have developed a "critical consciousness" about the identity-based systems of power that are alleged to permeate and define all of society, creating profound and almost intractable injustices that must be "disrupted and dismantled" to achieve "liberation." The goal of "anti-racist," "culturally aware," and "social justice" approaches to education is to awaken a critical consciousness in our children so that they will grow up not to think critically but to think in terms of Critical Theories.

To understand why this isn't just a problem but an incredibly alarming one requires understanding how the Critical Theories in Critical Social Justice see the world. That is, you have to understand what your kids will be "woke up" to in their classrooms.

To take the issue of race, Critical Race Theory begins with the assumption that racism is ordinary in our societies and present in all interactions and social and cultural phenomena, and it is up to the Critical Race Theorist—using a Woke critical consciousness—to "make it visible" and "call it out." In Critical Race Theory, the question is not "did racism take place?" but rather, "how did racism manifest in that situation?"

Rather than learning how to do mathematics, then, your children will be taught to ask questions like how mathematics is used to maintain racial oppression—for it must, according to Critical Race Theory. This is precisely the sort of curriculum that we already see in the Ethnic Studies program in the state of Washington and its "ethnomathematics" project. Rather than focusing on the mechanics of mathematics, students will be taught to focus on the ways they can explore topics like racism and oppression through mathematics, or leaning on math as a foil that facilitates discussions on important topics—like "who it benefits" to focus on getting right answers in mathematics.

Other subjects will be similar, if not worse. A Critical Theory approach to studying American history will be dedicated to making students woke to all of the ways the United States, from its founding, has been an unjust, oppressive nation that systemically oppresses certain identity groups. (...)

Indeed, many such programs will claim that the United States was founded intentionally on genocide, slavery, and a principle of white supremacy and anti-Blackness that has never been repaired. Its legacy is white privilege and white comfort that must be challenged at every opportunity if we are ever to achieve racial equity. (...)

Bringing Critical Social Justice into our educational systems is therefore not beneficent or benign. It is a deliberate attempt to try to program our children to think in an explicitly cynical, pessimistic, and falsely sociological way about all matters relevant to identity in every possible subject, including our history and even science and mathematics. The goal is to make our children woke, to give them a critical consciousness with which they will, unlike their parents, know that the point of understanding society is to change it in a very narrow and increasingly divisive way.

QuoteKansalaisaloitteen otsikko
Antirasistiset strategiat ja kriittinen näkökulma opintosuunnitelmiin

(...)

Antirasistiset strategiat ja kriittinen näkökulma käsittelisi syvällisemmin esimerkiksi:

1. Rasismia käsitteenä
2. Systemaattista ja rakenteellista rasismia, joka on lainsäädännön tai erilaisten instituutioiden käytäntöjen avulla toteutettua rasismia. Mahdollisia ilmenemismuotoja ovat käytäntöihin ja sääntöihin perustuva rasismi esimerkiksi sosiaali- ja terveydenhuollossa, oppilaitoksissa tai työelämässä. Siihen kuuluu myös mm. aiheeton liiallinen huomion kiinnittäminen vähemmistöryhmien edustajiin julkisissa paikoissa virkamiesten toimesta.
3. Kulttuurierojen ymmärtämistä ja kulttuurirasismia käsittelisi uskoja ja luuloja luonteenominaisuuksista, jotka ovat läpi historian olleet sidoksissa tiettyihin "rotuihin". Kulttuurirasismilla ja "muukalaispelolla" on pitkä historia, jota tulisi kurssin yhteydessä käydä läpi.
4. Tiedostamattomia micro-aggressioita ja rasismi vähemmistöjä kohtaan
- ennakkoluulot, jotka estävät samaistumasta toisen kokemaan kipuun.
- tällaisiin tutkimuksiin perehtyminen kuten italialaistutkimus
5. Rasismin historiallinen näkökulma mm.
- orjuus
- Massamurhat
- Rotusorto
- Valkoinen ylivoima
6. Kriittinen näkökulma:

Vastuullista ajattelua, joka on valmis vuorovaikutukseen muiden kanssa. Aktiivinen yhteiskunnallinen toiminta, jossa tarkastellaan erilaisista näkökulmista kasvatuksen ja yhteiskunnan kriittistä erittelyä, sekä moraalista arviointia. Tämä näkökulma tarkastelee myös ajattelu- ja toimintavälineiden kehittelytyötä, joilla voidaan kyseenalaistaa vakiintuneita oletuksia. Näin ollen antaa myös valmiutta arvioida uudelleen omia käsityksiään ja ajattelutapoja ja myös korjata niitä. Kriittinen ajattelija tunnistaa myös käsittelemänsä asian kokoanaiskuvasta erityispiirteet.
(Lähde 9; Mikkonen, 2018)

QuoteWhy Power Is Getting Woke
The point of politicizing everything is to make you forget what real politics is.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is one of the nation's top diplomats, second only to the Secretary of State.  (...)

(...) What on earth could possess America's UN ambassador to decide to broadcast the message that America is a deeply racist country down to its bones? Even if you were to accept some, or maybe even all, of what she's saying as being true, what sort of powerful incentives could convince a top diplomat to engage in a highly controversial debate that not only has nothing to do with her job, but is in fact quite literally the opposite of her job description? How did we get here?

Wokeness isn't radical, it's repressive

One thing to know about Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield is that she isn't exactly a radical activist storming the gates of power. She is power. (...)

But perhaps an even better example of this phenomenon is the very man who appointed Thomas-Greenfield: President Biden. In the nearly half century he spent in political office before assuming the presidency, Joe Biden wasn't exactly known for being a social justice crusader. (...) But that all now seems to have completely reversed: It feels as if not a day goes by where Biden isn't heard decrying the country's "systemic racism" while branding every new initiative as a step toward achieving the newly fashionable concept of "equity."

And while he might be the most high profile (and perhaps most consequential) example, Biden's overnight conversion characterizes a broader elite "awokening" that seems to have infected nearly an entire leadership class. What could explain all of it?

It's extremely common to find critics of "wokeness" and critical race theory decrying it as a radical activist- and academic-driven plot to upend the basic foundations of American society. And while it certainly does like to present itself that way, and is even believed to be exactly that by its most true believers, it's an analysis that fails to explain why every Fortune 500 company, establishment politician, media executive, and entertainer has become an evangelist for these ideas. After all, radicalism is about threatening and upending existing power structures. What we're seeing now is quite the opposite. Far from seeing these ideas as a threat, the existing power structure is enthusiastically adopting them as something of a ruling class ideology. So unless you think all of these people are critical theory sleeper cells who are just now being awakened to carry out a plot decades in the making, the more likely explanation is that not only are these ideas compatible with power, but something about them must actually lend themselves to protecting and even enhancing that power. In other words, it's an ideology that seems much more suited not to radicalism, but to the opposite: repression.

The privatization of politics

One of the most conspicuous things about woke politics is that it politicizes everything. It inserts politics into every space, interaction, and relationship. It problematizes, deconstructs, and dismantles. It calls out and it cancels. And above all, it personalizes politics. (...)

Woke politics makes politics less about what powerful people do, and more about what everyone does. (...)

(...) Maybe the point of politicizing everything is to make you forget what actual politics is?

The "awokening" of our elites is also an unburdening

(...) Where public servants once faced politics as a force for accountability, they can increasingly now passively preside over a country as it educates itself, recognizes its privilege, and "reckons" with its past. Corporations that once existed in a fundamental tension with a political sphere that had the power to regulate them now see that sphere contracted to make way for a privatized political realm that requires them only to emblazon the latest slogan on their marketing materials. Celebrities who once faced scrutiny for their impact on mass culture and can now easily plug into the latest hashtag and effortlessly assume the mantle of moral influencer.

Instead of antagonizing power and holding it to account, wokeness makes it invisible. It flattens everyone, elite and not, into fellow participants in a national religion, one in which those with power merely serve as a ceremonial priesthood whose sole responsibility is to ensure faithful observance. The great "awokening" of America's elites is also something of a great unburdening — an unburdening from the responsibilities, accountability, and scrutiny that comes with power. Ultimately, it's an unburdening of a leadership class from a country and its people. The question is: Can any country survive that?

To be continued.

QuoteCIA Embraces Left-Wing Ideology, Leftists Deny That This Is Happening
   
In a mind-blowing marketing video first published on March 25, but which had escaped widespread notice until recent days, the CIA enthusiastically endorsed several key tenets of what has now indisputably become a hegemonic left/liberal ideological and rhetorical construct

(...)

Whenever they are confronted with the reality that their rhetorical stylings are being aped across the entire country's power centers, now including the Intelligence Community, left-wing activists and journalists tend to angrily disclaim any culpability. The CIA's decision to institutionally pronounce itself a wellspring of "intersectionality," they'll insist, is all fake and cynical co-optation.

However, this isn't so much a "co-optation" as it is a natural evolution of Woke Ideology's imperatives. The CIA can easily adopt something approximating an "intersectional" attitude toward racial, gender, gender identity-related oppressions and continue on with its ordinary mission. In fact, the adoption of this rhetoric could enhance its mission by strengthening its domestic cultural cachet. Say John Brennan is a true believer in intersectionality doctrine — which definitely is not out of the question — and truly believes the CIA can help carry out its goals. What then?

Asserting some discontinuity between these concepts' newfound universal popularity and left-wing activism makes no sense. Is there any more potent left-wing belief in circulation at the moment than that of "intersectional" oppressions, and their all-pervasive, defining influence on American life? All the CIA is doing is signaling its eagerness to partake in the ideological project of dismantling these alleged oppressions. In a way, this is a true victory for the Activist Left — the potency of whose beliefs are gaining purchase at a spellbinding pace, probably never more rapidly than in the past year.

But instead of interrogating why it is that the rhetorical and ideological paradigm they've relentlessly promoted fits so easily within the country's most powerful institutions, from Wall Street banks to the Big Tech monopolies to the CIA, left-wing activists and journalists will often petulantly change the subject. After I commented on the "Woke CIA" video yesterday via Twitter, hardcore radical Rage Against the Machine frontman Tom Morello came out of nowhere to accuse me of denying the "evils" of past CIA actions — such as assassinations and coups — and acting like the "real problem" with the CIA is their sudden practice of distributing so-called "woke pamphlets."

I'm reading a very illuminating book right now (not a pamphlet) that details numerous largely-forgotten brutal CIA transgressions, such as a covert 1958 mission which resulted in the bombing of a market and a church on Ambon Island, Indonesia, obliterating civilians. Anyone unfamiliar with this and other chapters in CIA history should "educate" themselves, and perhaps that will help them understand what the boldly subversive left-wing guitar player evidently doesn't — which is that "Woke Ideology" is perfectly compatible with the CIA's institutional prerogative to further entrench its own power.

That history makes it doubly absurd for liberals (and, albeit more tacitly, leftists) to have been so tolerant of CIA interventions into domestic political affairs because their short-term political objectives (disabling and ousting Trump) happened to align. Now, they seem angrier with those who point out the self-evident absurdity of this CIA marketing tactic than with the tactic itself. Maybe that's because they've been prime movers in creating the political conditions under which adopting such tactics is considered shrewd.

Liberals and leftists have to constantly run around disclaiming that their beliefs, aesthetics, and speech codes have become hegemonic because posturing as beleaguered, noble outsiders is fundamental to their self-conception. As one Twitter commenter put it to me, "My view is that the CIA has looked at the beliefs of those coming out of elite schools and decided this is how they have to pitch to them." Well... yeah.

Many don't find it interesting or worthy of comment that ideological prescriptions and rhetorical formulations once largely relegated to Tumblr and obscure academic circles have migrated to the highest levels of the US intelligence apparatus within a matter of years. They should feel free to keep screeching into the void online, while others attempt to critically evaluate this culture-upheaving phenomenon.

QuoteThis is repulsive. The Intercept was founded during the Snowden story to defend privacy rights & oppose the security state. Now, the liberal DNC hacks who "edit" it are boasting they got personal data from Gab users & are sorting through it, doing FBI's work to find "extremists."

Bold Adversarial Journalism: serving as mouthpieces for the CIA and acting as monitoring cops for the FBI. Liberal political hacks ruin everything. The Intercept is shit.

The people who run the Intercept now had nothing to do with its founding -- they just leech off those who did -- and are authoritarian shit liberals so this is what they do. They only saving grace is that outside like 3 writers, nobody reads that rag:

Quote from: zupi on 05.05.2021, 00:29:42
Tuo on kyllä ehkä kaikkien aikojen pahin sananraiskaus ja kaikista naurettavin näiden wokeistien väittämistä, kun he sanovat edustavansa jonkinlaista "kriittistä ajattelua"...  :facepalm:

QuoteCritical thinking is the analysis of facts to form a judgment. ... definitions ... generally include the rational, skeptical, unbiased analysis, or evaluation of factual evidence. Critical thinking is self-directed, self-disciplined, self-monitored, and self-corrective thinking. It presupposes assent to rigorous standards of excellence and mindful command of their use. 

QuoteSCOOP: The Walt Disney Corporation claims that America was founded on "systemic racism,"  encourages employees to complete a "white privilege checklist," and separates minorities into racially-segregated "affinity groups."

I've obtained internal documents that will shock you.

According to a trove of whistleblower materials, Disney has launched a "diversity and inclusion" program, called "Reimagine Tomorrow," which includes trainings on "systemic racism," "white privilege," "white fragility," "white saviors," "microaggressions," and "antiracism."

Disney claims that America has a "long history of systemic racism and transphobia" and tells employees they must "take ownership of educating yourself about structural anti-Black racism" and "not rely on your Black colleagues to educate you," which is "emotionally taxing."

White employees are told to "work through feelings of guilt, shame, and defensiveness to understand what is beneath them and what needs to be healed." They must "listen with empathy [to] Black colleagues" and "not question or debate Black colleagues' lived experience."

Disney tells employees they should reject "equality," or "equal treatment," and instead strive for "equity," or "the equality of outcome." They must "reflect" on America's "racist infrastructure" and "think carefully about whether or not [their] wealth" is derived from racism.

Disney sponsored the creation of a "21-Day Racial Equity and Social Justice Challenge" and recommended it to employees. The challenge begins with a lesson on "systemic racism" and tells participants they have "all been raised in a society that elevates white culture over others."

Next, participants are asked to complete a "white privilege checklist": "I am white," I am heterosexual," "I am a man," "I still identity as the gender I was born in," "I have never been raped," "I don't rely on public transportation," and "I have never been called a terrorist."

Finally, participants are told they must "pivot" from "white dominant culture" to "something different." The document claims that "competition," "individualism," "timeliness," and "comprehensiveness" are "white dominant" values that "perpetuate white supremacy culture."

Disney recommends that employees read a how-to guide called "75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice." The article tells readers to "defund the police," "participate in reparations," "decolonize your bookshelf," and "find and join a local 'white space.'"

Finally, Disney has launched racially-segregated "affinity groups" for minority employees, with the goal of achieving "culturally-authentic insights." The Latino group was named "Hola," the Asian group was named "Compass," and the black group was named "Wakanda."

Quote from: zupi on 08.05.2021, 22:19:41

QuoteSCOOP: The Walt Disney Corporation claims that America was founded on "systemic racism,"  encourages employees to complete a "white privilege checklist," and separates minorities into racially-segregated "affinity groups."

I've obtained internal documents that will shock you.

(...)

QuoteSpace Force officer relieved of post after denouncing Marxist ideology and critical race theory in military: Report

A commander in the United States Space Force was apparently relieved from his post after appearing on a podcast to promote his book, which asserts a neo-Marxist agenda is transforming military culture and policy.

"Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting, Space Operations Command commander, relieved Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier of command of the 11th Space Warning Squadron, Buckley Air Force Base, Colorado, May 14, due to loss of trust and confidence in his ability to lead," the Space Force said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.

(...)

Lohmeier self-published Irresistible Revolution: Marxism's Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military this week. The book, according to the description, explores the "impact of a neo-Marxist agenda" and the manner in which the "Black Lives Matter movement, anti-racism, postmodernism, [and] political correctness" affect the national security of the United States.

Lohmeier said that he had informed his superiors, public affairs staff, and lawyers for the military about the book prior to publication, but it was not subject to a pre-publication review.

(...)

"My intent never has been to engage in partisan politics. I have written a book about a particular political ideology (Marxism) in the hope that our Defense Department might return to being politically nonpartisan in the future as it has honorably done throughout history," he told Military.com.

The Air Force Academy graduate appeared on the podcast Information Operation last week to publicize the book, in which he criticized Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's diversity and inclusion "agenda."

"I don't demonize the man, but I want to make it clear to both him and every service member this agenda — it will divide us. It will not unify us, " Lohmeier said.

(...)

"The diversity, inclusion and equity industry and the trainings we are receiving in the military ... is rooted in critical race theory, which is rooted in Marxism," Lohmeier said.  (...)

Lohmeier added that conservatives in the military who are willing to voice their opinions are painted as "extremists."

"What you see happening in the U.S. military at the moment is that if you're a conservative, then you're lumped into a group of people who are labeled extremists, if you're willing to voice your views. And if you're aligned with the Left, then it's OK to be an activist online because no one's gonna hold you accountable," he said.

QuoteStudent investigated for saying women must have vaginas

A law student who said that women have vaginas and are not as physically strong as men is being investigated by her university.

Disciplinary action is being taken against Lisa Keogh, 29, over "offensive" and "discriminatory" comments that she made during lectures at Abertay University, Dundee.

The mature student was reported by younger classmates after she said women were born with female genitals and that "the difference in physical strength of men versus women is a fact". The complaints have prompted a formal investigation into her conduct.

Keogh, a final-year student, fears that any sanction could end her dream of becoming a human rights lawyer. (...)

QuoteA school counsellor in Canada has been indoctrinating a 13-year-old girl into believing she's trans.

She continues to try to undermine the parents and communicate with the girl, even after dad talked to the school principal, revoking permission for her to talk to their daughter.

The girl told the school counsellor she does not want to talk to her.

Not satisfied, the counsellor tried to officially change the girl's screen name for all of the online classrooms.

That didn't work either, so now the counsellor has gone and changed the name of the school's GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) to 'Wellness Group' so that parents won't know their child is part of it.

Incredibly, the school counsellor also reached out to the girl after this to give her the number for the Kids Help Phone.

I have spoken at length with the mom. She's as sweet and kind and supportive as can be.

The parents have been completely blindsided by all of this.

This is a 13-year-old child once again being confused by school indoctrination and pressure to alienate her from her parents.

The daughter's 'non-binary' friend has stated she wants to curb-stomp the parents.

The parents have hired a proper therapist, and the school principal has been made aware of the online school groups where this grooming is occurring.

Future attempts from this school counsellor to communicate with their daughter will be met with legal action.

Quote1/13] The Swedes have a word, "fredsskadade", meaning "injured by peace", where a society has been prosperous & peaceful for so long that it somehow hurts them. Handicaps them. Debilitates their thinking.

2/13] Those immigrants are behaving badly? Or simply behaving according to their cultural norms? It's not that those cultural norms are wrong/illiberal/oppressive. It's that WE are oppressive. We must have done something to cause them to behave this way.

3/13] It's not uncommon thinking. Pelle Neroth Taylor describes this thinking in his documentary "Dying to be Multicultural" (on YouTube). Göran Adamson in his book "The Trojan Horse: A Leftist critique of Multiculturalism in the West".

4/13] The real world (sexist cultures, racist cultures, religious extremism, tribalism) hit Sweden hard. And they had no tools to deal with it other than to blame themselves. And so they did, severely.

5/13] The Woke are particularly prone to this thinking. Their demographic in the US/Canada often mirrors Swedes as a whole: native-born, middle/upper-middle class, university educated, privileged, sheltered, naïve. Romanticizers of third-world cultures they know little about.

6/13] The Woke are seldom immigrants from 2nd or 3rd-world countries.

But the anti-Woke often are: @seerutkchawla, Flag of India @ayaan, Flag of Somalia @Gadsaad. Flag of Lebanon They have not been fredsskadade, injured by peace, like so many in the West. They understand the virtues of The West, of true liberalism.

7/13] Very few of The Woke have spent any significant time outside their own country. Sure they studied abroad in London & spent a week in rural Guatemala marveling at the colorful indigenous clothing and exotic food. But did they spend years? Almost never.

8/13] Their cosmopolitanism is a "parochial cosmopolitanism" (@DouglasKMurray). A cultural cheerleading. Otherwise they'd see that the West as it truly is: the least oppressive societies in the the history of the world. Societies that needs to be improved, not torn down.

9/13] And certainly not "Patriarchal" or "rape cultures". You want a patriarchal rape culture? Go to rural Pakistan. Or rural Guatemala. Or indigenous Guatemala for that matter.

10/13] The Woke won't do that. They reserve their criticism for "the powerful". Which damages the cause of truly oppressed women. Read @YasMohammedxx's "Unveiled: How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam" or @Ayaan's Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights".

11/13] But for The Woke, it's only partially about helping the oppressed. It's more about virtue, and the new #VirtueCulture. Hence their silence on Islam, women in Muslim countries, immigrant patriarchal norms, Islam-rooted anti-Semitism in Europe, etc.

12/13] For all their talk about "diversity", The Woke are an enormously non-diverse group: university-educated, privileged mostly-White folks from Western countries with little experience with the real world.

But with lots of big ideas about the real world.

13/13] And those big ideas – from naïve, insular, parochial cosmopolitans – are going to do a lot of damage.

QuoteJari Ehrnrooth: Varokaa tätä uusvasemmistolaista ansaa
Kirjoittajan mukaan virheellinen tulkinta vääristää liberaalia demokratiaa.

(...)

Tasa-arvo-käsitteen absurdit laajennukset on silti syytä ottaa vakavasti, sillä ne kasvavat esiin lännen sisäisestä aateperinnöstä, joka vääristää liberaalia demokratiaa, pahimmillaan pehmeän totalitarismin asteelle.

(...)

Kanta on täsmälleen päinvastainen kuin oli Martin Luther Kingillä, joka kuuluisassa puheessaan I Have a Dream (1963) pyysi, että häntä ja muita mustia ei kohdeltaisi mustina, vaan tasa-arvoisina ihmisinä.

(...)

Mustien, naisten, seksuaalivähemmistöjen ja luonnon puolesta puhujat hyökkäävät länsimaista "sortojärjestelmää" vastaan aivan kuten marxilaiset muinoin proletariaatin puolesta. Työväestön vaurastuttua sen kauna ja katkeruus laantuivat, joten vasemmistolaisen etujoukon oli etsittävä uusia "sortavien rakenteiden" uhreja edustettavaksi.

1990-luku on jäämässä poikkeukselliseksi suvantokaudeksi tämän liikkeen historiassa. Kylmän sodan päätyttyä Neuvostoliiton lakkauttamiseen juhlittiin liberaalin demokratian ja markkinatalouden kiistatonta voittoa. Vapaiden ja vastuullisten yksilöiden tasa-arvoliike oli voittanut ja arvoeroja tasaava sosialismi kuollut ja kuopattu.

Ilo oli ennenaikainen. Tällä vuosituhannella totaalidemokraattiset liikkeet ja liberaalisosialistinen ajattelu ovat louhineet rotua, sukupuolta, seksuaalisia suuntauksia, luontoa, ekosysteemejä ja eläinkuntaa tuloksekkaasti. Vasemmistoaktivismi on löytänyt valtaisia uhripääomia poliittisen mellastuksen perusteiksi.

Valistusfilosofian ja tieteen kasvatille tämän liikkeen uusimmat dokumentit vaikuttavat julmalta pilalta. (...)

Vastaavanlaista, uskomattoman takapajuista ja rasistista ajattelua edustaa Minna Salami, joka haluaa haastaa europatriarkaalisen lineaarisen ja mitattavan tiedon mustan afrikkalaisnaisen syklisellä ja tunnepitoisella aistitiedolla. Hurjaa. Jäämme odottamaan maailmaa mullistavia tuloksia. Oletettavasti mustan naistiedon lähettiläällä on rankkaa, jos tiedostaa (woke!) käyttävänsä lineaarisesti ajattelevan valkoisen miehen kehittämää tietokonetta ja kännykkää. Toivottavasti hänen musta aistitietonsa kuitenkin hyväksyy valkoisen europatriarkaalisen tieteen kehittämän koronarokotteen. ( ;D)

Tasa-arvo tarkoittaa vain yksilöitä

Haluaisin vain nauraa näille uusvasemmistolaisen liikehdinnän yhä hupsummille ilmiöille, mutta historioitsijan vaistoni sanoo, että joudumme ottamaan ne vakavasti. Sosiaalisen median avulla tämä arvoyhtenäisyyttä vaativa pehmeä woke-totalitarismi voi saavuttaa samanlaisen kulttuurisen hegemonian kuin uusvasemmistolainen marxismi 1960-70 -luvuilla.

Pelkästään tämän uhkan vuoksi haluan varoittaa liberaalin demokratian ystäviä älyllisestä ja loogisesta ansasta, jonka uusvasemmistolainen marxismi, antirasismi, feminismi ja syväekologinen liike ovat nimenomaan tasa-arvokäsitteen avulla meille virittäneet.

Välttääksemme ansan meidän on muistettava kaksi käsitteen rajausta.

Ensinnäkin tasa-arvo voi koskea vain yksilöitä. (...) Ei ole muita tällaisia subjekteja kuin ihmisyksilöt. Ryhmät ja ominaisuudet eivät ole subjekteja. Niiden tasa-arvosta puhuminen on harhauttavaa ideologista julistusta.

Toiseksi yhtä tärkeä on rajaus, että vapaiden ja vastuullisten ihmisyksilöiden perustuslaillinen tasa-arvoisuus nojaa abstrahoituun ihmisyyteen eli pienimpään yhteiseen nimittäjäämme. Sukupuolella, iällä, rodulla, siviilisäädyllä, uskonnolla, seksuaalisella suuntauksella, etnisellä taustalla tai sillä, voidaanko mitään näitä tai muita vastaavia ominaisuuksia edes määrittää, ei ole mitään merkitystä yksilön tasa-arvoisuuden kannalta.

Liberaalissa demokraattisessa tasavallassa me vain määräämme, että kaikki ihmiset ovat heitä yhdistävän ihmisyytensä (ihmislajiin kuulumisensa) nojalla tasa-arvoiset. (...)

Tasa-arvokäsitteen vääristyminen alkaa heti, kun sitä aletaan nurinkurisesti soveltaa juuri niihin ominaisuuksiin, joka erottavat ihmisiä. Silloin siirrytään luonnollisten, sosiaalisten ja kulttuuristen arvoerojen tasaukseen, joka on liberaalidemokratian vastainen, yleensä joko sosiaalidemokraattinen tai liberaalisosialistinen hanke. Juuri tämän liikkeen aallot nyt lyövät taas korkeina.

Vasemmisto tarvitsee ideologian

Mihin vasemmistolainen totaalidemokraattinen suuntaus tarvitsee tasa-arvokäsitteen vinon ja vääristävän tulkinnan?

Vastaus on ilmeinen ja toistuu poliittisissa uutisissa päivittäin: Koska muuten vasemmistolta puuttuisi ideologinen perusta, jonka avulla ihmisryhmien ja yksilöiden eroista juontuvaa kaunaa ja katkeruutta voidaan kanavoida poliittiseksi liikkeeksi. Siksi puhutaan sukupuolten tasa-arvosta, rotujen tasa-arvosta, mahdollisuuksien tasa-arvosta ynnä muusta sellaisesta, joka on täysin vailla mieltä, sillä ihmisyksilöthän ovat tasa-arvoisia pelkästään ihmislajiin kuulumisen nojalla, muihin ominaisuuksiin tai mahdollisuuksiin katsomatta.

Vasemmiston puheenparressa toistuu tiuhaan eriarvoisuus, jota kunnon totaalidemokraatti tietysti löytää aina ja kaikkialta (paitsi sieltä mistä liberaalidemokratia sen poistaa eli lainsäädännöstä ja oikeusvaltiosta).  Älykkyyteen, kyvykkyyteen, menestykseen, vaurauteen ja terveyteen liittyvät erot ovat sosiaalidemokraateille ja liberaalisosialisteille loputon "eriarvoisuuksien ja vääryyksien" työmaa ja propagandan lähde.

Filosofisesti katsoen tämä jakobiininen asenne on kuitenkin vailla loogista perustaa pyrkiessään poistamaan juuri ne erot, joista elinvoimainen luonto ja kulttuuri muodostuvat.

Esimerkiksi hyvesignaloinnin peruskauraksi muodostunut "mahdollisuuksien tasa-arvo" kuulostaa monista varmasti hienolta idealta, mutta mitä se voisi käytännössä tarkoittaa? Halutaan siis taata kaikille samat mahdollisuudet erilaisista lähtökohdista ja taustoista huolimatta.

Minä kannatan hyvin pitkälle maksutonta koulutusta, joka laadukkaasti järjestettynä parantaa kansakunnan sivistystasoa ja vahvistaa demokratiaa. Mutta ei se mitenkään voi luoda "mahdollisuuksien tasa-arvoa", koska ei sitä voi olla olemassakaan, ellei poisteta perinnöllisiä ja kasvatuksellisia arvoeroja. Näiden arvoerojen poistaminen johtaisi kauhistuttaviin seurauksiin. Geneettisten älykkyys- ja lahjakkuuserojen tasaaminen lakkauttaisi lajin elinvoimaisuuden, ja tarkemmin ajatellen sama koskee kasvatuksellisia eroja, koska niiden tasaaminen lakkauttaisi kulttuurin elinvoimaisuuden. (...)

Oltakoon siis tarkkoina tämän tasa-arvokäsitteen kanssa. Se on loistava individualistinen idea niin kauan kuin sitä ei sotketa totaalidemokraattiseen arvotasaukseen, joka on liberaalia demokratiaa uhkaava kollektivistinen vitsaus.

Minusta sivistykseen ja tietoon nojaavan liberaalidemokraattisen oikeistopuolueen tehtävänä on puolustaa vapaiden ja vastuullisten yksilöiden tasa-arvoa samalla, kun torjutaan tämän kultaakin kalliimman käsitteen väärinkäyttö älyllisesti ja loogisesti kestämättömillä tavoilla.

(...)

Quote from: zupi on 19.01.2021, 00:49:44
Sattui vastaan ihan mielenkiintoinen twitter-tili, Intiasta lähtöisin oleva, nykyisin ilmeisesti Lontoossa asuva, anti-woke vasuri psykoterapeutti. Ajattelin pistää tähän pikku kokoelman mimmin viimeaikaisista twiiteistä. Ihan hyvää kamaa woke-saastasta, jonka ilmeisestikin tuntee varsin hyvin.

(...)

QuoteUniversity "safe spaces" are known to include cookies, colouring books, bubbles, play-doh, calming music, pillows, blankets, and one even had a video of frolicking puppies.

That's not a "safe space", it's a nursery.
4:07 AM · May 24, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteWhatever is the polar opposite of Stoicism is the culture we're living in.

Fragilism.
6:43 AM · May 23, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteJonathan Haidt's work blows the church of trauma out of the water.

Coddling, placating & endlessly soothing makes people worse not better.
10:50 PM · May 22, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteConsidering the genocidal horrors that have been perpetrated in the name of communism- I'm amazed every single time I see a hammer & sickle in someone's bio.

How on earth can you be proud of that?
2:00 AM · May 20, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteThis idea that 'communism wasn't done properly before' is very disturbing.

It indicates hubris, naivety & narcissism because the implication is that 'if I did it it would be done properly'- someone who thinks like that is exactly the sort of person who would turn into a monster.
12:13 AM · May 22, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteThere are growing numbers of people who:
-just can't think critically
-are incapable of handling disagreement
-seem extremely emotionally unstable
-are highly entitled
-see themselves as victims (even if not victimised)

This appears to be a contagion.
3:27 AM · May 22, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteCollectivism appeals to people who secretly wish to abandon all personal responsibility.
5:43 AM · May 21, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteWhat sort of a society 'educates' their children to hate themselves, hate society, believe they're being oppressed & think communism is the answer?

A very sick one.
6:46 AM · May 20, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteUnsolicited advice: buy a hard copy of a dictionary, don't rely solely on the internet.

Definitions are being altered to accommodate wokeness.
5:21 PM · May 19, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteA society that makes identity more important than class talks about a literal Prince & his feelings of 'oppression'.

A Prince.
6:42 PM · May 15, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

Quote"My truth" and "lived experience" are the same thing.

Glorified opinions.
2:33 AM · May 16, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteWe're overrun with toxic compassion, but so short on real empathy.
7:26 PM · May 12, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteWokeness doesn't allow for autonomy or agency. You aren't allowed to make up your own mind or choose a position.

It's doctrine is set up to force you into a position: adherent or enemy.
4:50 AM · May 11, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteSo many people seem shocked to discover that life is really hard, they incorrectly assess this as an aberration & then find things to assign blame to.
6:16 AM · May 10, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteJust the fact that we have to keep debating whether 2+2 actually = 4 is a sign of how divorced from reality things have gotten.
1:39 AM · May 10, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteReducing human beings to our biological functions like birthing or bleeding robs us of our personhood.

It's very dehumanising.
9:16 PM · May 8, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteWhy are we allowed to observe sex differences in animals but have to pretend they don't exist in humans?
4:04 AM · May 8, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteBoth sexes have a 'toxic' side, but it's only socially acceptable to talk about one.
10:27 PM · May 6, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteUnhealthy masculinity might be 'toxic', but healthy masculinity is a beautiful thing. It looks like brotherhood, loyalty, courage, healthy aggression, protectiveness, & strength.
7:56 PM · May 6, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuotePlease spend one year in India before you tell me Britain is a patriarchy.
3:39 AM · May 5, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteSome facts for the people who believe all men are oppressors:
-Homeless population is 95% men
-97% of people who die at work are men
-More men drop out of university
-95.5% of the prison population are men
-Suicide rates for men are 3x higher than women
3:02 AM · May 5, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

Quote-If you're white, male & working class you're the least likely person to go to university
-30,000 more women than men are enrolled at universities
-Male victims of CSA & rape get the least help
-International forced labour laws protect everyone except men
3:02 AM · May 5, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteInstead of alleviating mental health stigma, we've created a 'wellness stigma'.

It's more socially acceptable to be struggling, than to be functional & well.
10:50 PM · May 3, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteIdentity politics doesn't work socially, it doesn't increase sensitivity it decreases it & creates tribes.

Treat everyone as an individual; case by case basis.
12:49 AM · May 3, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteThere are many 'intellectuals' who are educated past their intellectual ability. That's why they make no sense.
9:36 PM · May 2, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteShant Mesrobian@ShantMM

The point of wokeness is to create racial division. It is a self-fulfilling ideology. Woke people crave racial strife more than anyone else. It gives them meaning and purpose. It creates the kind of society they pretend to be fighting against.

1:41 AM · May 27, 2021·Twitter Web App

QuoteSeerut K. Chawla@seerutkchawla

Wokenesss is good example of how people high in agreeableness can be extremely aggressive when emboldened by a group.

7:41 AM · May 27, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

QuoteFive Ugly Truths About Critical Race Theory

Critical Race Theory is currently getting a ton of attention on the national and international stage, which is long overdue, but there are also many misconceptions about it. Here are five questions that many people are asking about Critical Race Theory along with straight answers, explanations, and a raft of proofs from the Critical Race Theory literature itself. My hope is that people will be able to use these proofs to show people that Critical Race Theory is every bit as bad as its critics contend.

(...)

Question: Is Critical Race Theory racist?

Answer: Yes.

Critical Race Theory begins by asserting the importance of social significance of racial categories, rejecting colorblindness, equality, and neutrality, and advocating for discrimination meant to "level the playing field." These things lead it to reproduce and enact racism in practice. It also explicitly says that all white people are either racist or complicit in the system of racism (so, racist) by virtue of benefiting from privileges that they cannot renounce.

Examples:

(...)

"Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism, and neutral principles of constitutional law." From Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, first edition, p. 3.

(...)

Question: Does Critical Race Theory advance the vision and activism of the Civil Rights Movement?

Answer: No.

Critical Race Theory refers to that vision as "traditional approaches to civil rights" and calls it into question. The Civil Rights Movement called for living up to the foundational promises of the United States (and other free nations) and incrementally changing the system so that those original ideals were met. Critical Race Theory rejects incrementalism in favor of revolution. It rejects the existing system and demands replacing it with its own. It rejects the liberal order and all that goes with it as being part of the system which must be dismantled and replaced. It is therefore fundamentally different than the Civil Rights Movement (and is explicitly anti-liberal and anti-equality).

Examples:

(...)

Question: Does Critical Race Theory say that all white people are racist?

Answer: Yes.

More specifically, Critical Race Theory says that all white people are either racist or that they are complicit in a "system of racism" (so, racist) that they wittingly or unwittingly uphold to their own benefit unless they are "actively antiracist" (and usually even then). Those benefits of "whiteness" are labeled "white privilege" in general and are said to be outside of the scope of things that white people can intentionally renounce. The most they can do is "strive to be less white" and to become aware of and condemn "whiteness" as a system.

Examples:

(...)

"Many critical race theorists and social scientists alike hold that racism is pervasive, systemic, and deeply ingrained. If we take this perspective, then no white member of society seems quite so innocent." From Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, first edition, pp. 79–80.

"...a positive white identity is an impossible goal. White identity is inherently racist; white people do not exist outside the system of white supremacy." From White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, by Robin DiAngelo, p. 149.

(...)

Question: Is Critical Race Theory Marxist?

Answer: Yes and no.

It is accurate to say that Critical Race Theory is mostly Marxian but not specifically Marxist. It is more accurately adapted from neo-Marxism, which is in turn adapted from Marxism.

The main difference is that Marxism is concerned primarily with economic class and rejects racial categories in favor of workers' solidarity. What this means is that Critical Race Theory operates like Marxism but using race instead of economic class as the line of "social stratification," above which people are "privileged" or "oppressors" and below which people are "marginalized" or "oppressed." This social order is assumed in Critical Race Theory as "the ordinary state of affairs" and analyzed in the same way Marx analyzed across class stratification. Namely, Marx's "conflict theory" (a.k.a. "critical philosophy," so Critical Theory of Race, i.e., Critical Race Theory) is the tool for analyzing society, which is assumed to be totally racialized (by white people).

(...)

Examples:

(...)

"As the reader will see, critical race theory builds on the insights of two previous movements, critical legal studies and radical feminism, to both of which it owes a large debt. It also draws from certain European philosophers and theorists, such as Antonio Gramsci and Jacques Derrida, as well as from the American radical tradition exemplified by such figures as Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Black Power and Chicano movements of the sixties and early seventies." From Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, first edition, p. 4.

(...)

Question: Is Critical Race Theory an analytical tool for understanding race and racism?

Answer: No, not really (there's a tiny sliver of yes here, in a misleading sense).

Critical Race Theory describes itself as a movement of activists and scholars. This is not exactly what one would expect from a mere "analytical tool."

More accurately, Critical Race Theory is a worldview, not a means of analysis. Critical Race Theory begins from the underlying operating assumptions that race is constantly being imposed by a "white supremacist" society ("systemic racism") and that racism is therefore the ordinary state of affairs in society. It believes further that racism is effectively impossible to eradicate within the existing "white supremacist" system and therefore that it has merely hidden itself better, when it seems to be diminished or less impactful. Critical Race Theory is the tool that allows the people who have awakened to a "Critical Consciousness of race" (i.e., Critical Race Theorists) to detect hidden racism in everything. This is a way of viewing the world, however, not a way of analyzing the world as it is.

Examples:

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