Recent Lowlights in Woke Capture of Our Once-Venerable Institutions
Lamenting the astonishing success of the activist Left’s centurylong Gramscian march through America’s major institutions is, at this juncture, old hat.
Still, there have been a few recent, powerful examples, coming in quick succession, illustrating the extent to which leading liberal institutions of civil society have been captured by far-left activist wokesters who take opportunistic advantage of their groups’ venerable reputations in an attempt to repurpose them for dubious ends.
Take, for example, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, once one of the nation’s leading lights of the civil rights movement, which in recent decades has increasingly degenerated into a cesspool of grievance politics, intersectionality, race-tinged hucksterism, and crass Democratic Party politicking.
Last week, the Florida chapter of the NAACP asked its national board to issue a travel advisory against visiting the Sunshine State due to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ recent moves to, among other things, extirpate “diversity, equity, and inclusion” racialist indoctrination from public universities and convince the College Board to drop asinine leftist indulgences such as “queer studies” from its model Advanced Placement curriculum in African American studies.
As DeSantis, a Republican, aptly summed it up at a press conference when asked about the NAACP tiff: “What a joke!”
Consider also the American Civil Liberties Union’s steady descent, in recent years, away from the free speech absolutism that was long a hallmark of the organization and led it, back in 1978, to legally argue on behalf of neo-Nazi provocateurs who wanted to march in the heavily Jewish suburb of Skokie, Illinois.
Not so much nowadays, as a 2021 headline in The New York Times put it: “Once a Bastion of Free Speech, the ACLU Faces an Identity Crisis: An organization that has defended the First Amendment rights of Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan is split by an internal debate over whether supporting progressive causes is more important.”
The ACLU’s “internal debate” over whether to err on the side of free speech or progressivism was on full display recently at Stanford Law School.
The school’s associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion, Tirien Steinbach, who served as a high-ranking local ACLU official prior to her diversitycrat sinecure, was caught on video asking the ludicrous (and now viral and frequently meme-d) question of whether the “juice” of the heavily protested Judge Kyle Duncan’s right to speak freely was “worth the squeeze” of the “harm” his mere presence allegedly caused congregated students’ snowflake sensibilities.
I also have some personal experience in the modern ACLU’s resistance to open debate: A few years back, I tried to organize a written debate on the hot-button topic of biological male (“transgender women”) athletes competing in women’s sports, and was rebuffed by the ACLU—an organization that has a whole section on its website dedicated to “transgender rights.”
Consider also the Southern Poverty Law Center, another once-iconic organization of the civil rights movement that also has descended in recent years into far-left activism. Earlier this month, a SPLC attorney named Thomas Jurgens was arrested and charged with domestic terrorism for his role in the outrageous mob attacks on Atlanta’s “Cop City” training facility.
Arguably even worse for the Southern Poverty Law Center, last month the FBI publicly rescinded a memo on the alleged dangers of so-called “radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology” (whatever that means). That memo had heavily cited the SPLC’s extraordinarily biased use of “hate maps” and targeting of “hate groups,” and its formal rescission by the FBI was a (much-deserved) blow to the SPLC’s credibility.
Finally, a current radical Biden nominee for a judgeship on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, Nancy Abudu, is the sitting director of strategic litigation for the SPLC. She has made many outlandish statements while there, including saying that the modern American criminal justice system is “practically the same … as during slavery.”
Following the 2019 firing of an SPLC co-founder over alleged racial animus and sexual harassment, one former staffer asserted that the SPLC’s serial, tendentious claims of “hate” amount to a “cynical fundraising scam.”
And I would know: The SPLC came after me personally in a series of hit pieces this past fall, including one turgid treatise clocking in at almost 5,000 words. I view that as a badge of honor.
Finally, consider also the recent politicization of leading scientific organizations, which was already evident during COVID-19 but which has intensified of late.
Last week, Nature magazine concluded that its 2020 presidential endorsement of Joe Biden led many to lose trust in both science as a discipline and Nature as a journal—and then doubled down and vowed to continue to make political endorsements, anyway.
As the journal tweeted: “Political endorsements might not always win hearts and minds, but when candidates threaten a retreat from reason”—whatever that means—”science must speak out.”
Apparently, Nature’s announcement was so persuasive that Holden Thorp, editor-in-chief of rival Science magazine, lauded Nature’s “excellent” decision to double down on political endorsements and bemoaned as “unacceptable”—and thus necessarily requiring rebuke from “elites”—the commonplace policy stance that “climate change may be real, but I don’t think we should have government regulation to deal with it.”
But who in the world, exactly, elected Holden Thorp to tell us what is an “acceptable” opinion to hold about climate policy? Is the Left for free speech and an open exchange of ideas, or is it not?
O’Sullivan’s Law, named after veteran British conservative and former National Review editor John O’Sullivan, stipulates that “all organizations that are not explicitly right-wing will over time become left-wing.” That assertion has never been more vindicated.
The level of 'corruption' in our government is 'unacceptable': JD Vance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpa0w4A87Ao
Frank Figliuzzi: FBI Is Developing A ‘Crisis Of Credibility’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75RsbJNkxGI
Eight things that killed the Democrat Party
By M.B. Mathews
The old Democrat Party is gone. In its place is a radical Libertine Party, full of itself and full of radical sexual, cultural, and economic ideas that have all but killed their chances of ever getting legitimately elected again. The following five things are what I believe has murdered the Democrat Party in its sleep:
1. CRT: Critical Race Theory in all its permutations, regardless of its origins and history, has become the banner of anti-white racism, disguising itself as "anti-racism." Under its banner, white people are told they are worthless, toxic, hateful oppressors. Worse, companies are actually hiring people who promote this toxicity and schools are teaching students to hate white people. Now out in the open, anti-white racism has created a hate-filled atmosphere of constant tension and dissension, where the only thing that matters, first and foremost, is skin color. This can only be laid at the feet of Democrats.
2. TRANS WOMEN IN WOMEN'S SPORTS: The gross unfairness of allowing men into women's sports (no, I will not call them "women") is so blatant and outrageous, that proponents are seen not merely as insane, but malevolent. The destruction of women's sports is viewed by all rational people as evil in the name of wokeness.
3. CORRUPTION IN THE FBI: The malicious and ethics-free raid on Mar-a-Lago is viewed even by many Democrats and all Republicans as vicious political intimidation, with the goal of destroying any followers of Donald Trump. This began in earnest during the "Russia collusion" case and saw its culmination in midnight raids of innocent conservatives revealing a hateful, vengeful vigilantism on the part of the radical left. In the hope that supporters of Trump and other conservative candidates would drop out of politics in fear of similar reprisals, these Gestapo tactics have not only solidified Trump's support and the support of even moderately conservative candidates, but have shown the Left to be petty children in a deranged, red-haze temper tantrum.
4. COVID MASK AND VACCINE MANDATES: Certainly a show of power rather than anything prophylactic against COVID, blue states and leftist groups have revealed that they know the masks do not prevent COVID, but instead are a symbol of big-government Stasi tactics designed to subjugate the citizenry in order to prepare them for eventual control.
5. DRAG QUEENS IN THE SCHOOLS: Young children have been indoctrinated into sexual fetishism and perverse sexual behavior at the behest of school administrators and leftist parents who seem to see nothing morally wrong with gay men dressing up as women in highly sexually-suggestive costumery and behavior. Why they are doing this has become clear: They want to break down all parental control over children and indoctrinate them into pedophilia, perversity, and compliance. For most parents, this was a bustier too far.
6. THE ECONOMY: From the start in 2021 when Joe Biden killed the Keystone pipeline and halted all drilling and new permits, the economy began tanking. Gas prices, supply line problems, paying people not to work, profligate spending, and other avoidable problems has hit the average American smack dab in the wallet. No matter how much the Biden administration denies their role in inflation and no matter how many times Joe says the economy is "strong as hell," Americans watch their buying power dwindle. They want relief and it is clear they will not get it from the Democrat Party.
7. ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: From day one, the borders were flung open by the Democrat Party to drug traffickers, murderers, and myriad other miscreants in the hope they would be new Democrat votes. As a result, crime is rampant, blue cities under Democrat rule are suffering and homelessness is on the rise, all the while Biden spokespeople are claiming the "border is closed." Squealing like stuck pigs, places like New York City which have reluctantly become home to Texas' illegals, have seen a marked inability to safely house the very illegals they claim to have wanted to live in their "sanctuary city."
8. CRIME: Because of the Democrat rule in blue cities, crime is not being prosecuted in the name of some weird kind of reparations. What the Democrats don't get is that they hurt their own innocent population by allowing criminals a get-out-jail-free card, and by not prosecuting at all. Their racist policies hurt the very people they claim to want to help. Why are they doing this? To deliberately create chaos in the execution of anti-white racism. The one solution to the rising crime rate, the prosecution and incarceration of criminals, is the one thing blue cities under Democrat rule will not do. Mayor Lightfoot makes weird and demonic home videos of herself dancing around in what appears to be a drugged stupor. Rather than be a responsible mayor, she has totally ignored the death-by-violence rate in Chicago. This is another very clear example of Democrats doing what they do best; destroying things.
Exclusive – Rep. Jim Banks: Biden Pentagon Focusing on DEI Instead of Protecting America
House Armed Services Subcommittee for Military Personnel Chair Jim Banks (R-IN) in a recent exclusive interview with Breitbart News harshly criticized the Biden Pentagon for focusing on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) — or efforts to make the military more racially and gender-diverse — instead of focusing on making it more lethal.
“They’re focusing on DEI instead of on the future of our armed forces and protecting America, which is the explicit purpose of our military to begin with,” said Banks, who is also a Navy reservist.
Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN). (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)
Banks held a hearing this week to grill top Biden Pentagon officials from Department of Defense (DOD) and each military service on the six million man-hours troops were forced to spend on DEI training in the first year of the Biden administration.
Banks said the big takeaway from the hearing was that none of the Biden administration officials could justify spending that much time on DEI with any evidence or data.
“What’s the statistical or empirical evidence that they have at the Pentagon that shows that any of this is worthwhile? Six million man-hours that could be spent on training our troops to defeat China or positioning us to strengthen our military in other ways, but are instead being focused on DEI political training pushed on our troops,” he said.
Related: Matt Gaetz Kills Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI) Amendment to Defense Bill:
RepMattGaetz / Rumble“There wasn’t a single example,” he said. “[Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Gil Cisneros] who oversees all of the DEI programs at the Pentagon had nothing substantive at all to say in the hearing, especially justifying any of these efforts.”
“At the end of the day, as I said, the hearing this week provided no evidence that DEI programs are effective at all,” he said.
Banks also blasted the DOD for not doing anything to reprimand Kelisa Wing, who formerly served as the Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA)’s chief diversity office until she was caught tweeting racist remarks about white people.
The DOD told lawmakers only hours before the hearing that Wing was reassigned to another position, allegedly for reasons not related to her tweets.
Kelisa Wing chief of diversity, equity and inclusion for the Department of Defense’s K-12 school system. (Department of Defense Education Activity)
“They just reshuffled her position — a six figure salary — to put her somewhere else when she should never have been hired by the Pentagon to begin with,” Banks said. “This woman was even caught making shameless plugs for the racist books that she had written at military conferences.”
“It’s an important example of how these officials have operated within the Pentagon,” he said, but added, “It’s happening all across the federal government though, in the Biden administration, where they’re hiring people with these very dangerous anti-American, racist and woke ideologies that they’re pushing out on our society, on our culture.”
Banks said House Republicans are unified against this “politicized left-wing woke DEI training,” and will look to use the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to end it.
“We’re going to do everything that we can to strip it and defund it from the military,” he said. “We’re just getting started.”
Follow Breitbart News’s Kristina Wong on Twitter, Truth Social, or on Facebook.
WATCH: CNO Can’t Explain Why Navy Hosted DEI Summit:
C-SPANThe Biden disgrace that unleashed the ongoing torrent of foreign policy disasters
In case you haven’t noticed yet, the foreign policy of the United States is a catastrophe after two years of Biden’s stewardship. A brutal war is killing tens of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians, China is openly threatening Taiwan and building a blue water navy to outclass our declining forces. Saudi Arabia, the lynchpin of our Arab Middle East policy is playing footsie with the mullahs of Iran, who are acquiring oil markets and technical/economic help from Russia and China, and most importantly, Biden has driven together as allies Russia and China, overcoming natural tensions over their long border and deep rivalry.
Things are going very, very badly for America, and China has not even taken kinetic action against Taiwan, something that is a distinct possibility in the current environment of American diplomatic collapse.
But this collapse is very understandable. It began with an event that continues to reverberate, one that was just celebrated by the Taliban: the clumsy and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan that let behind dead Marines and many billions of dollars of military equipment ready for our former enemies to use against us, wither directly or by supplying them to (other) terrorist entities.
Check out this gloating tweet:
Our lying media will cover up this disaster as long as it can: until it becomes impossible. Bad things are in prospect, as our enemies know that we have become, in the prophetic words of Richard Nixon, “A pitiful, helpless giant.”
“If when the chips are down, the world’s most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.”
Photo credit: Twitter screengrab
BANKSTER JANET YELLEN PROTECTS BIDEN FOREIGN MONEY TRANSFERS FROM THEIR FOREIGN PAYMASTERS
KID GLOVE TREATMENT': Johnson slams Bidens' 'troubling financial transactions'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG3zZQOVd1Y
THE GAMER LAWYER AT WORK
CUT AND PASTE YOUTUBE LINKS
Bidens don't seem to 'cover their tracks' in alleged China money web: Curley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQkbnOO-mbM
THE BIDEN KLEPTOCRACY
RIDING THE DRAGON: The Bidens' Chinese Secrets (Full Documentary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRmlcEBAiIs
“Protect and enrich.” This is a perfect encapsulation of the
Clinton Foundation (TWO GAMER LAWYERS) and the
Obama (TWO GAMER LAWYERS) book and television deals.
Then there is the Biden family (THE CHINESE - BIDEN -
PENN INSTITUTE) (THREE GAMER LAWYERS) corruption,
followed closely behind by similar abuses of power and office by
the Warren (GAMER LAWYER) and Sanders families, as Peter
Schweizer described in his recent book “Profiles in
Corruption.” These names just scratch the surface of
government corruption (ADD GAMER LAWYER KAMALA
HARRIS AND HER LAWYER HUSBAND AND THE
BANKSTERS’ RENT BOY, LAWYER CHUCK SCHUMER).
According to the article, Falun Gong and its associated media, including the Epoch Times, have engaged in "conspiracy narratives" targeting Democrats and the Chinese Communist Party and of "links" between Joe Biden and the CCP. In fact, a great deal of evidence is emerging in the Comer investigation to show that those links are far from being conspiracy narratives. (See also a 2020 New York Times article, which labels Falun Gong "a leading purveyor of right-wing disinformation.")
Biden Blunder: ‘I Applaud China for Stepping Up’
“Today, I applaud China for stepping up,” President Joe Biden accidentally said in a speech in Canada on Friday, adding another public gaffe to his legacy of public speaking miscues that have gone viral on social media.
“Excuse me. I applaud Canada,” Biden then said, prompting laughs from the members of the Ottawa parliament.
Biden had been addressing Canada’s immigration policies, The New York Post explains:
“The US leader made the error while discussing how Canada’s government agreed to accept more migrants from Latin American countries — immediately after not mentioning China at all while discussing fentanyl, which is driving a surge in US overdose deaths.”
“You can tell what I’m thinking about China,” Biden added. “I won’t get into that, yet.”
“Protect and enrich.” This is a perfect encapsulation of the
Clinton Foundation (TWO GAMER LAWYERS) and the
Obama (TWO GAMER LAWYERS) book and television deals.
Then there is the Biden family (THE CHINESE - BIDEN -
PENN INSTITUTE) (THREE GAMER LAWYERS) corruption,
followed closely behind by similar abuses of power and office by
the Warren (GAMER LAWYER) and Sanders families, as Peter
Schweizer described in his recent book “Profiles in
Corruption.” These names just scratch the surface of
government corruption (ADD GAMER LAWYER KAMALA
HARRIS AND HER LAWYER HUSBAND AND THE
BANKSTERS’ RENT BOY, LAWYER CHUCK SCHUMER).
According to the article, Falun Gong and its associated media, including the Epoch Times, have engaged in "conspiracy narratives" targeting Democrats and the Chinese Communist Party and of "links" between Joe Biden and the CCP. In fact, a great deal of evidence is emerging in the Comer investigation to show that those links are far from being conspiracy narratives. (See also a 2020 New York Times article, which labels Falun Gong "a leading purveyor of right-wing disinformation.")
The Group the Chinese Communists Fear the Most
I have rarely heard it mentioned in the mainstream media, but, according to reports, during the 1990s in communist China, thirty thousand members of Falun Gong were rounded up and executed. The founder of Falun Gong, Li Hongzhi, fled China and now lives in the U.S., while in China members of the order went underground. According to Freedom House, "Falun Gong practitioners across China have since [July 1999] been subjected to widespread surveillance, arbitrary detention, horrific torture, and extrajudicial killing — abuses which continue today." Nonetheless, there are still some 100 million practitioners worldwide, and the movement continues to grow.
Information concerning the repression of Falun Gong is a Chinese state secret, with severe penalties for anyone attempting to obtain data. As the Falun Data Infocenter puts it: "The CCP has also used political and financial influence around the world to either keep journalists silent, or drive false narratives about Falun Gong." With total control inside China and compliance by foreign journalists, the Chinese Communist Party has driven a false narrative that minimizes the number of Falun Gong practitioners and hides data on the number of those abducted, tortured, killed, and killed for their organs, thus totally obscuring the record. At the same time, Chinese and foreign media continue to suggest that the victim is the abuser: the false idea that Falun Gong is a cult with dangerous potential.
For anyone who has studied the history of or practiced Falun Gong, the enormity of this continuing abuse and misinformation is obvious. Falun gong is a benign practice of meditation, exercise, and moral instruction with no political ties of any sort, but it is often represented, even by well-meaning Western journalists, as a "cult" or as a right-wing anti-CCP organization, as in a recent article in the Guardian, relying heavily on statements by Media Matters. According to the article, Falun Gong and its associated media, including the Epoch Times, have engaged in "conspiracy narratives" targeting Democrats and the Chinese Communist Party and of "links" between Joe Biden and the CCP. In fact, a great deal of evidence is emerging in the Comer investigation to show that those links are far from being conspiracy narratives. (See also a 2020 New York Times article, which labels Falun Gong "a leading purveyor of right-wing disinformation.")
If those journalists would do their homework, beginning with studying Falun Gong websites and the book Zhuan Falun by Li Hongzhi, instead of relying on the well funded Chinese "zero out" campaign, they would realize that Falun Gong is an uplifting instruction based on traditional, conservative Chinese practices.
The story of the Chinese government crackdown on Falun Gong is a classic example of totalitarian intolerance of competing ideas, and it involves both propaganda and physical terror. A careful examination of the record proves that the response of the communist Chinese regime is not very different from that of ancient regimes toward their own enslaved peoples. Despite their vast power, totalitarian leaders are fearful and at times even paranoid, as was Stalin, and the flip-side of fear is repression.
In reality, Falun Gong is a complex spiritual practice involving qijong-like exercises, positive thinking, and moral belief based on truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. As a practitioner myself, I know how Falun Gong can transform an individual from illness to health, confusion to knowledge, and intolerance to open-mindedness. It is obvious to me how a totalitarian regime would view Falun Gong as a threat, as indeed it would be to any form of deceit, corruption, or intolerance. As Falun Gong spread in China during the 1990s, at one point with 60 to 100 million followers in China alone, the practice became a threat to a government that had once encouraged it as a healthy "money-saving" vehicle and a social safety valve for a dissatisfied citizenry. Yet within months, beginning in July 1999, perhaps 100,000 followers were arrested and 30,000 executed. Even now, nearly 4,000 practitioners were arrested in 2021 (latest figures).
It is critical to consider the magnitude of this repression, with between two and four million Falun Gong followers "detained" in forced labor camps between 2000 and 2008 alone. Chinese policy toward Falun Gong is similar to the more widely publicized repression of Uyghurs, 1.5 million of whom have reportedly been detained in China, with hundreds of thousands of others subjected to forced sterilization, forced abortion, and religious suppression, and with the razing or damaging of 16,000 mosques. Like totalitarian regimes of the past, the CCP appears willing to employ the most ruthless tactics in order to secure its hold on the country.
Though Falun Gong is not a political movement, the exponential growth of Falun Gong during the 1990s might well have pressured authorities to change, and as soon as China's leaders recognized this threat, they suppressed Falun Gong with a heavy hand. One could hardly be truthful, compassionate, and forbearing and lend one's support to a communist regime governed by a few thousand members of the political elite intent on benefiting from their rule at the expense of the general population. Falun Gong teaches a form of gentleness and goodness that threatens the lies and violence of any totalitarian government.
One must ask: if the Chinese communists are willing to imprison millions of ethnic and religious minorities and to murder tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, what are they capable of in the future? How many lives are they willing to expend in a takeover of Taiwan? And once Taiwan is taken, how many Taiwanese will they imprison and execute? In the event of a war with Japan or with the United States, how many are they willing to see die, on both sides? And if Chinese communism were ever to achieve world domination, what kind of future could we expect? As Christians, probably something not unlike what the Uyghurs and Falun Gong have already experienced.
At the same time, the specter of Chinese repression should open our eyes to the remarkable value of our own system of democratic capitalism. The CCP has diminished Falun Gong in China, but, like all religious and spiritual practices, Falun Gong has found a safe home in America, at least in principle, though the Biden administration continues to restrict religious practice, to challenge religious rights in the courts and in agency practices, and to unleash the power of agencies like the Justice Department and IRS against the open practice of religion. Many of the same tactics adopted in communist China are accepted by progressives in our own country, including the encouragement of birth control and abortion, even late-term abortion and infanticide after birth.
For the present, there is still a difference between totalitarianism and democracy as practiced in the USA. Now is a time when American citizens, media, government, and corporations need to see clearly that communist China is a totalitarian government and to recognize what it is capable of. China's record toward Falun Gong, a violent repression that continues today, is one element in a string of crackdowns and arrests. We do not need to send a balloon over China to understand the nature of their regime, but we do need to recognize the enormity of its abuses and take appropriate actions to defend ourselves.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture, most recently Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
Image: tookapic via Pixabay, Pixabay License.
‘Everybody’s dropping like flies’: Federal ‘tranq’ warning follows escalating concerns in Mass
The flesh-eating drug taking over America | 7NEWS
Lawmaker Tells Why It's So Hard To Stop Fentanyl In California | Tom Umberg
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/11/democrat-controlled-sanctuary-city-of.html
Try the reality that illegal immigrants are routinely given free public housing by the U.S., based on the fact that they are uneducated, unskilled, and largely unemployable. Those are the criteria, and now importing poverty has never been easier. Shockingly, this comes as millions of poor Americans are out in the cold awaiting that housing that the original law was intended to help.
Thus, the tent cities, and by coincidence, the worst of these emerging shantytowns are in blue sanctuary cities loaded with illegal immigrants - Orange County, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, New York...Is there a connection? At a minimum, it's worth looking at. MONICA SHOWALTER
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