RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/06/25/winston-marshalls-brilliant-stand-against-cancel-culture/

There is something both stirring and sad about Winston Marshall’s goodbye letter to Mumford & Sons after he found himself in the eye of a Twitterstorm for praising the work of anti-Antifa journalist Andy Ngo.

It’s stirring because here we have a public figure making an enormous sacrifice – leaving the band he loves – in order that he might more freely express his political beliefs. That’s rare in this age in which celebs, columnists and politicians usually respond to Twittermobbing with abject apologies, mistakenly believing that public displays of atonement will appease the thoughtpolice. Of course it does the opposite. Apologies embolden the cancel-culture mob. They feast on retractions. The thrill of having successfully forced someone to recant deepens their lust for power.

So to see Marshall stand up for himself feels bracing. His ‘offence’ was that he tweeted favourably about Andy Ngo’s book, Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy. The woke left fantasises that Antifa’s Fisher-Price revolutionaries, its pampered TikTok vanguard, its masked middle-class activists who love beating up journalists and punching stupid working-class Trump supporters, are the 21st-century equivalent of the International Brigades. So anyone who takes the side of Mr Ngo – who recognises that Antifa is actually a bunch of dangerous arseholes – must be evil. And that includes Marshall.

The reaction to Marshall’s pro-Ngo tweet was, even by the standards of today’s viral inquisitions, deranged. He was branded scum, alt-right, a fascist. The cancelling fury was so intense that Marshall did apologise, initially, and then disappeared from public view. But now he’s back with his goodbye letter to his band.

He explains why his first response to the storm was to say sorry for having caused offence: ‘In the mania of the moment I was desperate to protect my bandmates. The hornets’ nest that I had unwittingly hit had unleashed a black-hearted swarm on them and their families.’ This is how ferocious and unforgiving digital witch-hunts have become. It isn’t only you, the speechcriminal, who will be hounded and libelled – so too will your friends, your family, your associates. Denounce yourself to save them and possibly save yourself – this is the unspoken creed of the modern mob that will harry for days anyone who deviates from its ideological narrative.

Now, Marshall is retracting his retraction. He has been ‘reflecting, reading and listening’, he says. He now feels that his previous apology ‘in a small way participates in the lie that [left-wing] extremism does not exist’. He strongly believes that Antifa extremism is as problematic as far-right extremism, and in order to be able to express this truth that he has arrived at through reflection and consideration he is leaving Mumford & Sons. ‘I could remain and continue to self-censor’, he writes, ‘but it will erode my sense of integrity. Gnaw my conscience.’

This is an incredibly important stand to take. Self-censorship is the most insidious form of censorship in the early 21st century. The knowledge that a witch-hunt can be formed in mere minutes on social media, and that its baying members will happily demonise, denounce and maybe even call for the sacking of any thoughtcriminal who questions transgenderism or refuses to genuflect to BLM or wonders out loud if Antifa might actually be a bit fa, has nurtured a culture of self-silencing, of keeping one’s opinions to oneself in order not to fall foul of the new self-selected guardians of correct thought.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/06/cancel-culture-comes-for-birds/

Those who think bird names reinforce prejudice have gone stork raven mad.

C ancel culture is at it again, and this time, they’re coming after . . . birds? Look out, Bachman’s sparrow. Because you were named after a 19th-century Lutheran minister with connections to slavery, you might lose your name. Over 140 North American bird species have eponymous names, from Anna’s hummingbird to MacGillivray’s warbler, but some in the birding community, such as the recently founded Bird Names for Birds, are determined to see these types of names completely rooted out. How refreshing it is to know that because we’ve solved all of the world’s other pressing issues, the only thing we have left to fix is bird names that make people feel “unsafe.”

It was a longspur that started it all. McCown’s longspur, to be specific. John McCown was a Confederate general, a historical fact that became a major issue after the George Floyd protests of last summer, which prompted birding authorities to take action. Now that McCown’s longspur is officially the Thick-billed longspur, activists can breathe more easily and set their bins on other feathered targets.

The Washington Post, NPR, and BirdWatching Daily, all with headlines such as “The Racist Legacy Many Birds Carry” and “Monuments and Teams Have Changed Names As America Reckons with Racism. Birds Are Next,” are filled with quotes from these activists. Many of them claim that we need to “decolonialize” birding, or that the black community isn’t represented enough in this field, or that they feel oppressed by having to wear a shirt with Audubon’s name on it (apparently, the Father of Birding had ties to slavery, too).

Don’t get me wrong; birds can be dangerous. Swans can break a grown man’s leg. Cassowaries have been known to kill humans. Our biblical friend Tobit went blind from bird droppings, for heaven’s sake. But claiming to be threatened or to feel endangered by the name of a bird is disingenuous silliness.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/bird-any-other-name-thought-crime-danusha-goska/

The Black Lives Matter movement and Critical Race Theory are powerful, seductive, and glamorous. They generate abundant capital, financial and social. As Americans secularize, walking away from organized religion, race ideology provides a ritualized seal of spiritual superiority. This new religion promises a cleansing purge. America will be razed to the ground, literally or culturally. Cities will burn; statues will topple. Language itself will swallow old, bad words and speak only the righteous lexicon. This shining new vocabulary will not be selected by the messy process of raucous human tongues trying out what works best to speak the heart, the mind, the groin, with other busy, sloppy, greedy, horny, hearing-impaired humans, over the course of eons. No. New, holy syllables will be hand-forged by our betters, people who know what is good for us. A glorious tomorrow will emerge. A superior elite will educate, and, failing that, dominate the polluted masses.

Corporations and individuals have struggled to jump on the bandwagon and to share race ideology’s reflected glow. Coca-Cola told employees to “be less white.” America, the Jesuit magazine, urged Catholics to be “Woke.” Indoctrination in Critical Race Theory is required in schools, despite objections from parents, students, and teachers.

Race ideology is especially dominant in academia, sports, and entertainment. This is ironic because all three are elitist. These elites announce themselves as the representative of poor blacks. They do so while demonizing black conservatives who disagree with CRT and BLM.

Elite birders, aka birdwatchers, have harkened to the siren song of race ideology. These birders insist that birdwatching is a colonialist, white supremacist exercise.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/biden-omb-doubles-down-on-redefining-mothers-as-birthing-people-in-budget-proposal/

During a congressional hearing Wednesday, Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Shalanda Young defended the 2021 Biden budget proposal’s redefinition of mothers as “birthing people.”

Republican Representative Jason Smith, a top-ranking member on the House Budget Committee, noted that the replacement of the word “mother” for the gender-ambiguous phrase, in reference to funding maternal health care, was unprecedented for a budget plan.

“The budget requests $26 million to reduce maternal mortality and eliminate race-based disparities in outcomes among ‘birthing people.’” Smith said. “This is a shift from recent budgets that referred to maternal health issues as women’s issues. I’ve never heard the term before, can you explain what it means?”

“There are certain people who do not have gender identities that apply to female and male, so we think our language needs to be more inclusive on how we deal with complex issues,” Young responded.

Incorporating jargon of both gender and racial inclusivity, Biden’s budget stipulates that over $200 million in funding will be allocated to reduce the high rate of maternal mortality and “race-based disparities in outcomes among birthing people.” The latter term is instead of “mothers,” which encompasses the strictly female capabilities of both child delivery and child-rearing.

Subject: CPUP Pledge Campaign – Support and Stand up against Systemic Racism and Racial Injustice

Anti-Racism Pledge

As part of the Penn Medicine Community, the CPUP Antiracism Committee is committed to advancing racial equity and justice. We encourage you, your friends, colleagues, and leaders of this organization to sign the pledge to stand with those who have faced injustice based on the color of their skin.

Join us and sign the pledge!

I pledge to address the injustices that stem from systemic racism within our health system and university. I understand that some power structures are designed to oppress and keep us from uniting as a nation of justice for all.

·         EDUCATING myself on our country’s racist historical foundation and striving to understand all systemic racism and racial injustices.

·         Having an UNDERSTANDING of white privilege and speaking up whenever faced with racist remarks

·         LISTENING to marginalized community members with intention and engagement

·         SUPPORTING a workplace culture that can become increasingly equitable and just

·         ACKNOWLEDGE my own privilege and power and utilizing it to deconstruct oppression and hold my community accountable

I will commit to actively support and stand up against systemic racism and racial injustice.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2021/05/26/locked-and-woke-americas-largest-defense-contractor-subjects-executives-to-racist-reeducation-n1450010

Lockheed is the largest defense contractor the United States has. It’s the chief contractor on the F-35 Lightning fighter program. It builds and maintains much of the arsenal of our republic, and even builds advanced scientific systems such as the Hubble Space Telescope.

It is now another woke capture in corporate America, according to documents leaked to investigative reporter Christopher Rufo.

Last year, Lockheed Martin Corporation, the nation’s largest defense contractor, sent white male executives to a three-day diversity-training program aimed at deconstructing their “white male culture” and encouraging them to atone for their “white male privilege,” according to documents I have obtained.

The program, hosted on Zoom for a cohort of 13 Lockheed employees, was led by the diversity-consulting firm White Men As Full Diversity Partners, which specializes in helping white males “awaken together.” The Lockheed employees, all senior leaders in the company, included Aaron Huckaby, director of global supply chain operations; retired Air Force lieutenant colonel David Starr, director of the Hercules C-130 military transport program; retired Air Force lieutenant general Bruce Litchfield, vice president of sustainment operations; and Glenn Woods, vice president of production for the Air Force’s $1.7 trillion F-35 fighter jet program. (Lockheed Martin did not return request for comment.)

Perhaps this is among the reasons the F-35 is wasting so much taxpayer money. The company that makes it is not focused on its mission.

The same company that led the Lockheed training, White Men As Full Diversity Partners, also led similar racial training at the sensitive Sandia National Labs according to Rufo.

Is this company systematically targeting America’s defense contractors for its divisive racial trainings? Congress must investigate.

But with the Democrats in charge, Congress will do nothing.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/may/23/todays-religion-of-wokeism-ignores-logic-science-a/

Two weeks ago, on May 8, 2021, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) became the first mainline Protestant denomination to elect a transgender bishop. 

The Rev. Megan Rohrer, a female who insists on using the pronouns “he” and “him,” was elected to serve as the leader of the Sierra Pacific Synod of the ELCA, by a vote 209 yeas to 207 nays. Rohrer will be installed on September 11 at St. Matthew Lutheran Church in Walnut Creek, California. 

In celebrating her election, the new bishop praised Lutherans for “dismantling” what she called the “unjust” Christian standards set 1,700 years ago at the First Council of Nicaea. In doing so, Rohrer proved herself to be more a minister of the goddess of Woke than of Christ.

In “Wokeism: The New Religion of The West” (ConvergMedia, October 20, 2020), Max Funk argues, “There is a new religion. It is moving like a tidal wave through every facet of western culture, shaping and redefining society as it goes. This religion masquerades under the guise of compassion and justice, but underneath is an evil ideology that is incompatible with western values and incongruent with the Christian worldview.”

Mr. Funk continues: “Wokeism is a religion. Although it has not been organized into any formal religious structure, it has all the functions of religious doctrine. It has a unique epistemology (theory of knowledge), an evaluation of the human condition, and a redemption narrative … The goal of [Wokeism],” says Mr. Funk, “is the complete dismantling and rebuilding of western culture from the ground up.” 

Traditional values such as “logic, science, and reason” are replaced by subjective opinions and emotions. This is a worldview of special knowledge rather than self-evident truths; a religion of no reality but my reality; a narcissistic faith grounded in gnosis rather than God’s revelation.

https://www.discoursemagazine.com/culture-and-society/2021/05/24/can-you-gues

It is passing strange to receive emails from people who highlight their personal pronouns. Yes, James, I made a wild stab and guessed yours are “he, him.” Thanks for letting me know. My preferred sandwich is a pastrami on rye.

Preferred sandwiches are still rare in official email signatures, but “preferred pronouns” are not. They are now commonplace at woke institutions and are gradually spreading to all professional workplaces. Even though it’s a small issue, it points to a bigger problem. The insistent direction to use my “preferred pronoun,” even when that word is already obvious, is yet another step into the deepening quicksand of cultural hectoring, turning every aspect of daily life into a political battlefield. That quicksand is spreading fast, and far too many are sinking beneath it without a murmur. It’s time to call it out.

The movement to make “preferred pronouns” standard features of professional signatures began with transgender advocates. They were soon joined by people who identified as neither men nor women. Their concern was understandable. They want to be addressed in the way they prefer. That’s absolutely fine. So is letting people know how to address you, if the answer is not already clear from your name. The goal should be to make interaction easier, not to preen or harass.

The oddity is why so many other people for whom the right pronoun is obvious now include it in their e-mail. What’s the point? For some, it is the now-conventional virtue signaling, spreading their peacock tails for all to admire. For others, it’s simply following whatever their colleagues do or their boss demands. Resistance, they know all too well, can be fatal to careers.

Here’s a typical example, from a recent email to me. The sender’s name is a common female one, and her email signature at the bottom of the note reads as follows:

Development Editor: Editorial Research

Content, Resources, and Development

Major international publishing company

Pronouns: she/her

Please consider the environment before printing this email.

As an aside, there’s a delicious note of irony here, even though the sender missed it. (Irony and humor are not strong points in Woke World.) If printing is such a blot on the environment, what about her own profession? She works for a publishing company, for heaven’s sake. Is she a mere tool of the deforestation-literacy complex? A foolish consistency must be the hobgoblin of woke minds.

In the case of personal pronouns, we seldom need to be told which ones to use. Who, pray tell, is confused that Nicholas is “he” and Nicole is “she”? When James Morris, who wrote a fine trilogy on the British Empire, became Jan Morris, everyone switched smoothly from “he” to “her.” We didn’t need the hall monitor’s wagging finger to tell us. Jan’s new name made the correct pronoun clear. Such clarity is not enough for woke culture. To appease them, you must state your preferred pronouns publicly and repeatedly, no matter how obvious your name makes them—or pay the price for refusal. In fact, the wokest of the woke go even further, as this Forbes columnist did. Drop the term “preferred” because it is entirely too mild. Instead, demand these pronouns.