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The Cancel Culture Thread


Muda69

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Why Jordan Peterson Quit Academia: https://mises.org/wire/why-jordan-peterson-quit-academia

 

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Woke supremacy has been taking a toll on Western civilization. The casualties of wokeness are too many and sundry to track. But we should not forget that wokeness was first germinated in higher education, from whence it metastasized to the wider social body. The academy is the cathedral pulpit from which the ideological dictates of the elite flow downward to the hoi polloi.

According to David Acevedo of the National Association of Scholars, hundreds of North American academics have been subjected to cancel culture to date, including yours truly. And the number continues to grow. This is to say nothing about the curriculum, which has suffered excisions of canonical works from literature and philosophy and the denunciation of correct answers in math, among many other abominations.

Now woke ideology has led to the resignation of the most famous academic alive: the psychologist, best-selling author, and public intellectual Jordan Peterson, who announced in the National Post his decision to retire from his position as tenured full professor at the University of Toronto.

Peterson cites two main reasons for his resignation. The first involves his otherwise bad conscience regarding graduate students. For one, his white cis-hetero grad students are unlikely to land academic jobs due to the explicit discrimination that white males face in the academic job market.

I can attest to this fact, having served on hiring committees that set aside top-notch candidates who happened to be white males in favor of far less qualified and sometimes utterly unqualified comers whose membership in “marginalized” identity categories was their most distinguishing qualification. Adding insult to injury, academic job applicants must now submit “diversity” statements in which they swear allegiance to so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), or diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE), despite the ideology’s discriminatory function and, in the case of those from “dominant” identity categories, the likelihood that it diminishes their own prospects.

Furthermore, given Peterson’s association with the alt-right and white nationalism by hysterics in the media and the academic Left, his graduate students face even more discrimination than usual. Basically, any intellectual that opposes communism and third-wave feminism is dubbed a Nazi and a misogynist by academic leftists, and Peterson is no exception. Yet the public mischaracterizations and libelous accusations have been particularly egregious in his case.

The second reason Peterson gives for his retirement is generalized disgust with the DIE ideology and its erosion of academic standards. Peterson simply wants nothing further to do with the woke hegemony and has come to regard continued association with the university as tantamount to complicity with the woke regime.

In addition to academia, Peterson also pans Hollywood and the corporate world. The selection of actors in Hollywood is based on identity rather than excellence. The same goes for screenplays and the granting of awards. In every respect, the criteria for success have been utterly corrupted by DIE ideology.

Peterson also calls out the corporate world for its compliance with wokeness. Why, he asks, do capitalist companies accede to woke dictates? I’ve given my own explanation for this elsewhere. Wokeness serves as a demarcation device, a shibboleth for identifying cartel members and distinguishing them from the nonwoke competitors, who are to be starved of capital investments.

Peterson rightly calls the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) index a Chinese-style social credit score for corporations, a characterization that I drew several months ago and most recently in an essay on the Great Reset published in November 2021. The collectivist planners use the ESG index to squeeze nonwoke players out of the market and to drive ownership and control of production away from the noncompliant. The ESG score is an admissions ticket for entry into the woke cartels.

In addition to these objects of Peterson’s ire, we might also bemoan the woke infiltration of the media, professional sports, the music business, the fashion industry, advertising, book publishing, live theater, museum curation, and even religious belief and expression. Wokeness, in fact, is a religion in its own right. It has pervaded nearly every aspect of culture and society, subverting, displacing, and rendering obsolete and anathema the once cherished values of nearly all our institutions.

Where academia is concerned, the water has long since gone under the bridge. The West has been undergoing a ghoulish cultural revolution for several years, replete with struggle meetings and self-criticism sessions. Academia not only generated this cultural revolution but was the site first ravaged by it. Higher education is long gone, and Peterson’s retirement from it is somewhat anticlimactic. Nevertheless, given his intellectual prominence, Peterson’s resignation represents a high-water mark for the ravages wrought by DIE ideology on our society.

 

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https://nypost.com/2022/01/26/spotify-sides-with-joe-rogan-removes-neil-youngs-music/

Spotify has sided with its podcast superstar over Neil Young.

The legendary folk singer gave the streaming behemoth an ultimatum earlier this week, saying he refused to allow his music on the same platform as Joe Rogan. The “Heart of Gold” singer accused Rogan and his podcast of spreading false information about COVID-19 vaccines.

Spotify reportedly paid more than $100 million to be the exclusive home of Rogan’s show. Young, meanwhile, stands to lose 60% of his streaming income from his defiant stance, he said in a statement on his website.

“We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available to Spotify users,” a spokesperson for the company told the Wall Street Journal. “With that comes great responsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom for creators.” 

Since the start of the pandemic, the spokesman noted, Spotify has removed more than 20,000 COVID-related podcast episodes. Still, Young’s protests were not sufficient for it to drop its lucrative star talker. 

“We regret Neil’s decision to remove his music from Spotify, but hope to welcome him back soon,” the spokesperson added. 

Rogan’s podcast has attracted an estimated 11 million listeners.

Young’s letter — which is now deleted from his website — did not mince words in accusing the streaming giant of giving an undeserved platform to Rogan and his COVID-19 vaccine “misinformation.” 

“I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,” wrote the 76-year-old rock icon. “I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines — potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them.”YouTube scraps Joe Rogan podcast episode over Nazi Germany comparison

The note even included a formal ultimatum: “They can have Neil Young or Rogan. Not Both.”

In a statement posted on his website, Young thanked his publisher Hipgnosis and his label Warner Records/Reprise for supporting his ultimatum.

“Losing 60% of worldwide streaming income by leaving SPOTIFY is a very big deal, a costly move, but worth it for our integrity and beliefs. Misinformation about COVID is over the line.”

He went on to nudge other artists to take a similar stance.

“I sincerely hope that other artists can make a move, but I can’t really expect that to happen,” Young said. “I did this because I had no choice in my heart. It is who I am. I am not censoring anyone. I am speaking my own truth.”

Although Young did not specifically note which episodes he took issue with, Rogan did recently host Dr. Robert Malone, the “anti-vaxxer epidemiologist” who was recently booted from Twitter for alleged dissemination of vaccine misinformation, The Post previously reported. 

YouTube removed the episode, in which Malone compared the climate surrounding US public health to 1920s and 1930s Germany.

Representatives for neither Joe Rogan nor Spotify immediately returned The Post’s request for comment.

 

SF is not surprised, but Is SF the only one who sees Neil's hypocrisy here?  The activist singer who once stood for anti-government, free-speech and most other liberal causes, decides to take this stand against free speech with the government over a vaccine?

FTR - SF loves a lot of NY's music, and hasn't listened to Joe Rogan or even uses Spotify, but just found this interesting.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Neil Young's short-lived temper tantrum is over (quietly)......

I do find it interesting that the "misinformation" he was accused of spreading was actually from one of the doctors that holds 9 patents on MRNA vaccine technology.  So hardly "misinformation" IMHO.......

https://www.analyzingamerica.org/2022/02/650991/?fbclid=IwAR3_Q5nnxHMHjbJT9XFMDhjF_ma3XOXxi2sjWkJha69nvW2_KJEnFTpP2n8

It wasn’t long ago that Canadian-native, anti-Trump rockstar Neil Young demanded that Spotify remove all of his music after the platform has refused to blacklist podcaster Joe Rogan.

“I am doing this because Spotify is spreading fake information about vaccines – potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them,” Young said.

“I want you to let Spotify know immediately TODAY that I want all my music off their platform,” Young continued. “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.” Despite this ultimatum, Spotify called Neil Young’s bluff and refused to silence Rogan.

Spotify took a bold stand for freedom of speech amid major backlash from liberals, including the Obamas, who demanded censorship on the platform. Singer Joni Mitchell joined Young and also claimed she was removing her music from Spotify.

However, it turns out that neither Young nor Mitchell has the power to pull much of their music from the platform.

The musicians’ catalogs are on labels that remain streamable on Spotify, reports have confirmed.

Young and Mitchell never had the power to follow through on their threats themselves, the report adds.

Just over a year ago, Young sold a 50% stake in his catalog to U.K. music investor Hipgnosis for a cool $150 million.

Rogan, who is known for hosting a podcast where he gets high and talks about aliens, has dared to ask questions and hold discussions about coronavirus.

Liberals accuse Rogan of spreading “misinformation” because he invited highly credentialed physicians on his podcast, which includes cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough and Dr. Robert Malone who owns nine patents on the creation of mRNA vaccine technology.

This has resulted in a collective meltdown for the Left. Numerous high-profile figures have expressed outrage and announced boycotts against Spotify, which hosts Rogan’s popular podcast.

Rogan’s podcast is currently the most popular podcast in the country. He averages 11 million listeners per episode and reaches far more people than networks like CNN and MSNBC combined.

CNN only recorded over a million viewers in its primetime slots in 2021 while MSNBC averaged 1.53 million.

Rogan recently explained the controversy began because liberals are upset about “dangerous misinformation” that came from two episodes. He explained that one episode was “with Dr. Peter McCullough and one with Dr. Robert Malone. Dr. Peter McCullough is a cardiologist, and he is the most published physician in his field in history. Dr. Robert Malone owns nine patents on the creation of mRNA vaccine technology and is at least partially responsible for the creation of the technology that led to mRNA vaccines. Both these people are very highly credentialed, very intelligent, very accomplished people and they have an opinion, that’s different from the mainstream narrative. I wanted to hear what their opinion is.”

“I had them on and because of that, those episodes in particular, those episodes were labeled as being dangerous, they had dangerous misinformation in them,” Rogan continued.

“The problem I have with the term misinformation, especially today is that many of the things that we thought of as misinformation just a short while ago are now accepted as fact, like, for instance, eight months ago, if you said, ‘if you get vaccinated, you can still catch COVID and you can still spread COVID,’ you’d be removed from social media, they would they would ban you from certain platform,” he said.

“Now, that’s accepted as fact. If you said, I don’t think cloth masks work, you would be banned from social media. Now that’s openly and repeatedly stated on CNN. If you said I think it’s possible that COVID-19 came from a lab, you’d be banned from many social media platforms – now that’s on the cover of Newsweek. All of those theories that at one point in time were banned, were openly discussed by those two men that I had on my podcast that had been accused of dangerous misinformation.”

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  • 3 months later...
On 4/6/2021 at 10:33 AM, swordfish said:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/georgia-gov-kemp-slams-stacey-abrams-biggest-flip-flopper-since-john-kerry-on-georgia-boycotts

Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp fired back at his 2018 Democratic opponent, ex-Georgia State Rep. Stacey Abrams, who has led the charge against the Peach State's new election law.

Kemp told "The Story" that Abrams is appearing to have buyer's remorse after watching Major League Baseball decide to pull the lucrative All-Star Game out of Georgia — and a flood of boycott promises from liberal voters and activists.

Last week, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred Jr. announced he would be pulling the All-Star Game out of the state in response to Kemp signing the law, which prohibits electioneering within several dozen feet of a poll, expands some early voting, and institutes stronger identification requirements for Georgians seeking to vote absentee.

Atlanta's Coca-Cola, led by CEO James Quincey, and Delta Airlines -- the state's largest private employer -- led by CEO Edward Bastian, also slammed the bill, causing in turn conservative voters and activists to threaten their own boycotts of the corporate behemoths.

Kemp said Manfred "doesn't know what the hell he's talking about" when it comes to the alleged racism and inequities of the new law.

"You know, they're referencing no specific points in the legislation. I'm glad to talk through any of those [CEO's], by the way. You know, it's the biggest lie that has been out there," said Kemp.

"Obviously [MLB] didn't care what was said because they folded to the pressure. President Biden's handlers couldn't even get him a note card that told him what this bill did. Somebody is lying to you. It's not me. You can read the bill and prove that out." In that regard, host Martha MacCallum pointed to comments from Abrams, a high-profile Democrat in the state:

"Black, Latino, AAPI and Native American voters that are the most suppressed over [the new law] are the most likely to be hurt by potential boycotts of Georgia. To our friends, please do not boycott us. To my fellow Georgians, stay and fight, stay and vote," Abrams said.

Kemp accused Abrams of "profiting millions off of this" politicking.

"People need to follow the money and see why they're doing this and so effective and, quite honestly why they're working so hard at this. It has nothing to do with the merits of the bill. It's political pressure from a minority group of people, the cancel culture. They're shaking people down for a long time," he said.

He added that it is also likely a "distraction" for Democrats to use to keep Americans' mind off President Biden's border crisis and the "unconstitutional power grab" of H.R. 1, the 880-page election bill sponsored by Rep. John Sarbanes, D-Md.

"I think just the contrary [of Abrams' remarks]," said Kemp. "I think people are ready to double down and get the truth out there."

"You know, that is the biggest flip-flop since John Kerry I have ever seen. For someone that has been pressuring these corporations, pressuring Major League Baseball to now come out after the fact and say don't boycott? People are getting screwed in this, Martha."

Kerry, Biden's climate 'czar' and the Democrats' 2004 presidential nominee, was accused of being a "flip-flopper" on almost every major issue from the economy to the Iraq War during his campaign against President Bush.

Kemp said that the Democrats' now-successful calls for boycotts and relocations are hurting "hardworking" "small business people in Cobb County" and the Atlanta area -- as the All-Star Game was supposed to be played at the home of the Atlanta Braves.

He said baseball fans and youth that dream of playing major league sports will also be hurt because the games are being "politicized."

 

"People should be scared to death that it's going to come to their neighborhood, to their state, to their ball game, to their college, to their business,"

In response to MLB's pull-out from Atlanta, several other cities are now vying to be Manfred's chosen replacement.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is urging the MLB to move the game to his state, as the New York Mets have a stadium in Flushing, N.Y., and the Yankees in the South Bronx.

Take the All-Star game to New York?  Where the voting laws are already stricter than Georgia?  Wait, isn't that hypocrisy?  

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/schumer-suggests-ny-mlb-all-star-game-state-with-fewer-early-voting-days-similar-food-drink-restriction

Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer suggested the MLB play its All-Star Game in New York, "where we are working to make it easier, not harder, to vote." In New York state there are fewer early voting days than Georgia and a restriction on passing out food and water over $1 in value to voters in line.

"Racist voter suppression laws are now hurting Georgia's voters AND its economy. Georgia Republicans should be ashamed," Schumer said. 

"We would welcome @MLB to come to come play the All-Star Game in New York where we are working to make it easier, not harder, to vote."

New York also requires an excuse to request an absentee ballot. 

The MLB announced plans Friday to move its All-Star Game and MLB draft due to the Republican-backed election reform in Georgia. It has not yet chosen a new location.

"Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box," MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. "Fair access to voting continues to have our game’s unwavering support." 

The MLB is headquartered in New York City. 

Under the new Georgia bill, the Peach State offers 17 days of early voting to New York’s nine. Georgia bans passing out food and water to voters line within 150 feet, but allows for unattended water receptacles. New York bans passing out food and water, unless it’s under $1 in value and there’s no identification for who supplied it. 

FACT CHECKER DINGS BIDEN, MEDIA FOR 'JIM CROW' COMPARISON OF GEORGIA VOTING LAW 

Where the states differ is in voter ID requirements. Georgia’s new law requires voters to provide valid ID to vote by mail, as it already did for in-person voting. Previously, Georgia had relied on signature-matching to validate absentee ballots. New York does not require ID to vote by mail or in person, but ID is required to register to vote in federal elections. 

Georgia new law mandates two Saturdays of early voting and makes one Sunday optional. It mandates early voting hours must be at least 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. but can be up to 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.  New York early voting hours vary by county. 

Georgia allows no-excuse vote-by-mail, while New York requires an excuse. Risk of contracting Covid-19 counts as an excuse. 

The Georgia law limits the number of ballot drop boxes to one per early voting site or one per 100,000 voters in the county, whichever number is smaller. That provision was seen as favoring rural areas over urban. 

Drop boxes in Georgia must be placed in a county election office or early-voting precinct location, so they’re only available during business hours to be monitored. 

New York law allows completed absentee ballots at a board office, an early voting location or an Election Day voting location. There were 1,300 polling sites in the 2020 election. 

President Biden has called the Georgia law "Jim Crow on steroids." "Imagine passing the law saying you cannot provide water or food for someone standing in line to vote. Can't do that? Come on," he said. this week. 

Come on, Man..  angry joe biden GIF by Election 2016...Since when does expanding access become a restriction?

 

Wondering if MLB and/or Stacey Abrams is gonna apologize for moving the All-Star game from Atlanta last season to protest this new law "designed to suppress" voter turnout this election.......probably not......

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/21/voting-is-surging-georgia-despite-controversial-new-election-law/

 

 

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6 hours ago, swordfish said:

Wondering if MLB and/or Stacey Abrams is gonna apologize for moving the All-Star game from Atlanta last season to protest this new law "designed to suppress" voter turnout this election.......probably not......

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/21/voting-is-surging-georgia-despite-controversial-new-election-law/

 

 

So, you’ve concluded that, because there is a large voter turnout, the law does not function to suppress voting?

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10 hours ago, Bobref said:

So, you’ve concluded that, because there is a large voter turnout, the law does not function to suppress voting?

Yes, one would assume that a higher number of (legal) voters means that, regardless of the party......

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1 hour ago, swordfish said:

Yes, one would assume that a higher number of (legal) voters means that, regardless of the party......

One might assume that … but just the raw numbers, standing alone, don’t support that conclusion. There are multiple alternative explanations that are just as likely. Lack of critical analysis is a side effect of such a dogmatic, agenda-driven approach.

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NPR Tries To Cancel Stoner Metal Legend Matt Pike

https://reason.com/2022/05/25/npr-tries-to-cancel-stoner-metal-legend-matt-pike/

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Music journalist Grayson Haver Currin really wants you to know that stoner metal pioneer Matt Pike—best known for his shirtless live performances, bigfoot hunting videos, and hour-long, single-song concept albums about pot-smoking mystics traveling across an alien desert—harbors some weird, problematic, and even "dangerous" beliefs.

Last week, NPR published Currin's lengthy profile of Pike, a founding member of seminal bands Sleep and High on Fire, which focused almost entirely on Pike's affinity for conspiracy theorist David Icke and how journalists and fans can best hold him accountable for that grave sin.

Icke's worldview is a strange brew that posits a conspiracy of extraterrestrial reptiles is secretly running the world. He's also attracted accusations of being an antisemite for including the Rothchilds, the Israeli government, and Zionists generally in this conspiracy, arguing that revisionist histories of the Holocaust should be taught in schools, and that the Anti-Defamation League runs front right-wing groups to discredit people who try to blow the whistle on the wider lizard people conspiracy.

Pike's frequent invocations of Icke's various theories in his lyrics and interviews aren't anything new. As Currin notes, it's something journalists (including himself) have found humorous or charming over the years.

No longer, it seems.

In February, Pike gave an interview to Quietus in which he elaborated on his Ickism alongside other heterodox beliefs about Earth's shifting magnetic poles, the worrying rise of automation, and the pandemic being used as an excuse for a massive transfer of wealth from poor to the rich.

That interview sparked a minimal amount of Twitter outrage, which later morphed into Bandcamp Daily—the journalistic side of the eponymous music hosting site—pulling an article featuring Pike talking about his favorite albums.

That's all culminated in Currin's article from last week, in which the writer argues that music journalism's newfound mission of speaking truth to power chords requires a reevaluation of Pike and his place in polite metal society.

"In recent years, there has been so much conversation—within metal and, of course, far beyond it—about how a fan might and even should respond when an artist they adore does something they find odious or dangerous," writes Currin. "I could ask Pike what he believed and why he believed it. That was my first responsibility. And only then, I could decide if I were going to remain a fan—or, perhaps, back away."

The article is part traditional artist profile, part social justice-infused exposé. It's long and repetitive and neither Pike nor Currin comes off particularly well in it.

Currin spends a lot of time quizzing Pike on precisely which conspiracy theories he believes (apparently all of them, including some involving "Zionist bankers") and then expressing frustration when the artist doesn't immediately apologize for those beliefs or grok the real-world violence they're supposedly inspiring.

"The freedom to talk about antisemetic conspiracy theories without consequence might seem of little import to people worried instead about, say, survival. [Pike] would get worked up whenever I said as much, then apologize."

Pike tells Currin that he isn't a racist and that his freedom of speech to discuss lizard people is being crushed.

There's much about the profile that often seems just mean-spirited. Pike rarely says anything in the article. Instead, he "stammers," "whimpers," and "growls." Currin also acts like he's doing Pike a favor by giving him a chance to repent for unfavorable views that his article is also casting in the worst possible light and then broadcasting to the world:

"I was offering him the chance to exculpate himself, but he didn't seem to know what he actually believed, as if he were just offering up provocations without considering the way they interacted with one another or, frankly, reality."

Nothing about the NPR profile of Pike will surprise people who have been following the various permutations of cancel culture throughout the media. It's part of a particular trend in music journalism that sees as much value in "taking down bad actors" as it does in celebrating good art.

That shift in focus can be useful if it involves uncovering truly heinous or criminal actions of artists. Too often, it instead seems to collapse into refereeing weird or obnoxious behavior that has no wider effect on the world.

When applied to extreme and underground music, it can be truly destructive to the art itself. If an artist is going to be active in a scene, venues will need to book them, fans will need to buy their t-shirts, streaming platforms will need to carry their content, and reviewers will need to appraise and promote their new albums.

That all requires people to have some level of comfort associating with the person making the music. And that can't happen if fans, journalists, and anyone else who engages with their content is expected to, first and foremost, vet, challenge, and reject their most absurd, off-putting, or offensive beliefs.

There's a trade-off between ostracizing people with weird or even bad views and maintaining a thriving artistic scene where creators have the social license to experiment and push boundaries.

We seem to understand this in more mainstream contexts. Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novels are still taught in schools, despite her far more persistent, and far more explicitly antisemitic defense of Icke's work, for instance.

It's particularly true of alternative or extreme genres of music. Weird music requires weird people. In Pike's case, It's hard to imagine making 10-minute-long songs about Babylonian Gods and marijuana moon miners if you're not a bizarre conspiracy theorist.

Cracking down on those weird people, or having incredibly specific standards for the kinds of weirdness they can express or indulge, inescapably means a crackdown on weird music. Fewer Matt Pikes means fewer bands like Sleep and fewer High on Fire.

The corollary is that the continued production of weird and good music requires a pretty broad tolerance of people with weird or even bad beliefs.

For the record, it doesn't sound like Pike is a bad person. He just sounds like an odd duck. In the Quietus interview, he acknowledges as much while also describing himself as an "anarchist libertarian" that wants to be left alone.

That seems like a reasonable enough request.

 

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Netflix Airs Ricky Gervais' Controversial Standup, Chooses Actual Entertaining Over Woke Pandering

https://reason.com/2022/05/27/by-airing-ricky-gervais-controversial-standup-netflix-chooses-actual-entertainment-over-woke-pandering/

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This week, British comedian Ricky Gervais released a new Netflix standup special, SuperNature, which has been widely heralded by cultural critics in the media as transphobic, for bits like the one below:

"Oh, women! Not all women, I mean the old-fashioned ones. The old-fashioned women, the ones with wombs. Those fucking dinosaurs. I love the new women. They're great, aren't they? The new ones we've been seeing lately. The ones with beards and cocks. They're as good as gold, I love them. And now the old-fashioned ones say, 'Oh, they want to use our toilets.' 'Why shouldn't they use your toilets?' 'For ladies!' 'They are ladies—look at their pronouns! What about this person isn't a lady?' 'Well, his penis.' 'Her penis, you fucking bigot!' 'What if he rapes me?' 'What if she rapes you, you fucking TERF whore?'"

At this point, deeming standup specials transphobic—and taking to task the company that has platformed them—is a well-polished act. The only thing that's changed since this last happened, to Dave Chappelle, is Netflix's resolve to stand its ground.

In October, Netflix employees crashed a meeting of company executives and staged a walkout over the streaming service's decision to platform the purportedly transphobic special Dave Chappelle—one of the most famous living comedians who dreamed up the character Clayton Bigsby, a blind white supremacist who doesn't know he's black, and spent most of the early aughts crafting absurd skits about race for Chappelle's Show. The protesters technically never called for deplatforming Chappelle but demanded disclaimers before content that promotes so-called hate speech; for the algorithm to suggest "trans-affirming" content alongside specials like Chappelle's; and for the company to prioritize platforming work by trans/non-binary creators.

CEO Ted Sarandos responded that "content on screen doesn't directly translate to real-world harm." But when that failed to pacify the angry hordes, Sarandos claimed he miscalculated. "I should have led with a lot more humanity.… I had a group of employees who were definitely feeling pain and hurt from a decision we made," he told Variety. The company's new policy would involve drawing the line at content that calls for intentionally "physically harming other people." (In the same breath, he hyped a company fund that supports trans and non-binary content creators, catering to one of the employee demands.)

"Does Netflix even care that Ricky Gervais's SuperNature is rife with transphobic TERF ideology?" asks Aja Romano this week at Vox. The answer seems to finally be nope; comedy that pokes fun at extremely online trans activists can in fact be both widely amusing and a moneymaker. And Netflix is in the entertainment business, for which both of those components are important. "We program for a diversity of audiences and tastes; and we let viewers decide what's appropriate for them, versus having Netflix censor specific artists or voices," the company said in a policy update earlier this month. "Depending on your role, you may need to work on titles you perceive to be harmful. If you'd find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you."

Ergo, Romano argues, the company is "just fine inflicting bigoted hateful rhetoric on its subscribers" and "with the subsequent real-world harm that comes from amplifying such views."

"At this point, Netflix—the comedy division, if not the entire company—is not just passively supporting transphobic creators, but seem to be actively courting a transphobic audience," adds The A.V. Club's Mary Kate Carr. "The platform's choice to release this special now," writes Romano, "during a wave of unprecedented anti-trans legislation, is unconscionable."

 

These critics are wrong. The company is not "inflicting" hateful rhetoric on its subscribers; one must consensually opt in to watch it. The "real-world harm" argument goes unsubstantiated yet remains the frequent rallying cry used by many leftists to argue for deplatforming. Recall, for example, the newsroom protest by New York Times staffers, who argued en masse that the paper running an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) calling for military action to pacify domestic protests and riots was putting black staffers' lives in danger.

But does any evidence suggest that, without Gervais releasing comedy specials, Republican legislators would never have had the idea to pass trans bathroom bills? Or that the people who laugh at jokes about how annoying some radical trans activists are on Twitter are the same people who commit violent acts against trans people?

Terms like "TERF"—trans-exclusionary radical feminist—and characterizations of legislation as "anti-trans" are thrown about by activists, often with very little specificity or substantiation, and all kinds of beliefs, real and imagined, properly and poorly characterized, purportedly fall under those umbrellas. Activists frequently claim people like Andrew Sullivan, Jonathan Rauch, and J.K. Rowling qualify as "transphobic," when they make clear that they support civil rights for consenting adults who have transitioned but remain concerned about puberty blockers being administered to kids (and/or the frequency with which, and age at which, that is currently happening). According to many trans activists, these thinkers' refusal to uncritically accept radicals' arguments wholesale means they've committed apostasy, just as Gervais and Chappelle and Netflix executives have for poking fun at the annoying traits of some of these trans ideologues. Sweeping characterizations, like the ones deployed by Vox and The A.V. Club, collapse crucial distinctions in service of painting Gervais as hateful and bigoted, which he probably isn't.

In his latest special, Gervais tells extremely off-color jokes about all kinds of people and situations: kid funerals; the irony of people who've transitioned genders later wearing strap-ons to have sex; God's thought process when he created AIDS.

Years ago, Louis C.K. joked about masturbating on 9/11 between the first tower falling and the second. Sarah Silverman's 9/11 joke is all about how it was such a terrible day—it was the day she found out the disturbing number of calories present in soy chai lattes. It's doubtful either is glad that terrorists crashed planes into the twin towers, killing nearly 3,000 people over the course of a few hours and saddling thousands of tower evacuees and first responders with cancer and other fatal conditions. But this is what comedians do, something we seemed to understand up until recently: They find creative, subversive, and sometimes shockingly distasteful ways to make light of phenomena we're collectively grappling with: grief, disaster, aging, politics, oddities, subcultures, mortality, plagues. 

It doesn't always land; you may not think masturbation and 9/11 combine for comedic payoff quite as well as Louis C.K. does. But you sure as hell have to give comics space to try, and audiences the opportunity to seek reprieve from the world's horrors, delivered magnanimously to us by the funny people.

This is exactly what Netflix aims to do and why more than 200 million people pay for it, seemingly against the wishes of the scolds at Vox, who sanctimoniously announced to no one in particular that they'll "refrain from clapping" for Gervais' standup. As if anyone had asked!

Agreed.  Who is forcing individuals who find Mr. Gervais's standup distasteful to actually watch it?  Last time I checked there are still things called "off buttons" and "change channel/station buttons" on media devices.

 

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  • 2 months later...

Metallica Faces Being Canceled by Many Young Fans Who Just Discovered Them

https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/metallica-faces-being-canceled-by-many-young-fans-who-just-discovered-them/ar-AA10rTvm?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=42e0f4ed9d494b029a80bf5fbfabf964

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Metallica experienced a recent surge in popularity after a whole new generation of music fans discovered them this summer when Netflix's Stranger Things used their 1986 song "Master of Puppets" during a pivotal scene. However, now they're being scrutinized by many of those same young fans after a TikTok video that alleges "problematic" past behavior went viral.

A TikTok user who goes by the name Serena Trueblood on the platform has been posting videos discussing various artists and past controversies associated with them. Over the weekend, Trueblood featured Metallica. She shows video footage of former bassist Jason Newsted appearing to do a Nazi salute onstage, as well as band members making jokes onstage about the then-recent death of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain.

Metallica singer James Hetfield was also accused of racism in Trueblood's TikTok post. One clip shows Roberta Freeman, a backup singer for Guns N' Roses when the two rock acts toured together in 1992, alleging Hetfield used the N-word to describe Ice-T. Another video included by Trueblood showed an archival MTV News segment that reported Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose also accused Metallica of racism in regards to Ice-T and his band Body Count.

Trueblood's TikTok video quickly filled up with comments, such as one person writing, "I wish I watched this before I bought my Metallica shirt." The debate carried over to Twitter, where many people defended the heavy metal act from being "canceled."

The "canceling" attempt comes after the heavy metal stars defended the new fans who recently discovered their music.

Many of these fans are also followers of Stranger Things. During the hit show's season 4 finale, popular character Eddie Munson broke out his guitar to shred "Master of Puppets." Soon, the song found a new life, entering Billboard's Hot 100 chart and rising high on streaming platforms.

Metallica took notice of the Stranger Things attention and posted a live version of "Master of Puppets" on their TikTok account. After some "gate-keeping" commenters criticized millennials and Generation Z for taking an interest in the group, Metallica responded in the thread: "FYI—EVERYONE is welcome in the Metallica Family. Whether you've been a fan for 40 hours or 40 years, we all share a bond through music. All of you started at ground zero at one point in time."

Metallica also posted a video of them jamming with the actor who portrayed Munson (Joseph Quinn) and gifting him with a guitar.

"Metallica hyping up these new fans and then they get canceled a month later," read one tweet that described the situation.

The band's fans on Twitter stuck up for the metal legends, though.

"People change. Metallica has done more good than they have bad and you just instantly jump on the bandwagon of hatred because you have a hive mind and need something to be canceled so you can sleep at night," a defender wrote.

Many people who sided with Metallica noted that critics shouldn't use old allegations from Rose, who they said is problematic in his own right.

"Not Axl Rose being used as a source for Metallica getting canceled," one person tweeted. "He's literally known as one of the worst people in the industry."

"I feel like we gotta draw the line somewhere between separating art from artist cause," said another person on Twitter. "Bands like the Beatles and Metallica are honestly too influential to be 'canceled' like they're literally institutions in music and culture ??? You can't cancel them for the past."

 

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https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/plans-rename-monkeypox-stigmatization-concerns-rcna43012

LONDON — The World Health Organization says it’s holding an open forum to rename the disease monkeypox, after some critics raised concerns the name could be derogatory or have racist connotations.

In a statement Friday, the U.N. health agency said it has also renamed two families, or clades, of the virus, using Roman numerals instead of geographic areas, to avoid stigmatization. The version of the disease formerly known as the Congo Basin will now be known as Clade one or I and the West Africa clade will be known as Clade two or II.

WHO said the decision was made following a meeting of scientists this week and in line with current best practices for naming diseases, which aims to “avoid causing offense to any cultural, social, national, regional, professional, or ethnic groups, and minimize any negative impact on trade, travel, tourism or animal welfare.”

Numerous other diseases, including Japanese encephalitis, Marburg virus, Spanish influenza and Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome have been named after the geographic areas where they first arose or were identified. WHO has not publicly suggested changing any of those names.

 

So since being discovered back in 1958, "Monkeypox" is now "derogatory" or "racist"? 

 

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11 minutes ago, swordfish said:

o since being discovered back in 1958, "Monkeypox" is now "derogatory" or "racist"? 

 

Apparently:

https://slate.com/technology/2022/08/monkeypox-name-discourse-who-stigma-mpv-mpx.html

 

FTA:

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We’re now in a monkeypox public health emergency. And while the name seems to hint that monkeys are at fault for all this, that’s far from true.

Monkeypox is a zoonotic disease caused by the very scientific-sounding name Monkeypox virus. But the name itself gives the wrong impression: people did not monkeypox from monkeys, it was just identified in monkeys first. It’s still unclear what animal actually started the spread, though as far as animal transmission goes, the route of concern is rats to humans.

More importantly, many experts argue that “monkeypox,” which has for decades been endemic to regions in Africa—and is now seeing cases rise due to a delayed public health response—carries a stigma. For one thing, “there is a long history of Black people being referred to as monkeys,” says Ifeanyi Nsofor, a public health physician and fellow at the Aspen Institute. The current name “stigmatizes Black people, but in particular stigmatizes Africans.”

...

Because having somebody's "feelings hurt" is now the biggest act of violence that can be perpetrated against an individual. 

Edited by Muda69
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  • 1 month later...

Federal Judge Vows to Stop Hiring Law Clerks from Yale Law School: https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/09/exclusive-federal-judge-vows-to-stop-hiring-law-clerks-from-yale-law-school/

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Judge James C. Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit announced Thursday that he would no longer be hiring law clerks from Yale Law School and urged other judges to follow suit. In a keynote address to the Kentucky Chapters Conference of the Federalist Society, titled “Agreeing to Disagree — Restoring America by Resisting Cancel Culture,” Ho cited a number of high-profile examples of speakers being shouted down or otherwise censored at law schools across the country but singled out Yale Law as “one particular law school where cancellations and disruptions seem to occur with special frequency.”

“Yale not only tolerates the cancellation of views — it actively practices it,” Ho said, according to prepared remarks exclusively obtained by National Review. “Starting today, I will no longer hire law clerks from Yale Law School. And I hope that other judges will join me as well.

Ho has made waves in the past for his outspoken criticisms of left-wing campus culture. In February, in the wake of Georgetown Law’s suspension of Ilya Shapiro, the judge surprised the audience at a Federalist Society–organized event on Georgetown Law’s campus by giving a resounding defense of Shapiro during a speech that was initially intended to be about originalism. At the time, Ho acknowledged that he “was scheduled to talk” about originalism but said he’d “decided . . . to spend my time today talking about Ilya Shapiro.” In those remarks, which garnered significant public attention, Ho delivered blistering criticism of the campus attitudes that had led to Shapiro’s ouster, arguing that “cancel culture is not just antithetical to our constitutional culture and our American culture,” but “to the very legal system that each of you seeks to join,” and declared: “If Ilya Shapiro is deserving of cancellation, then you should go ahead and cancel me too.”

Ho’s half-hour address to the Kentucky Federalist Society conference sounded similar notes, arguing that “all too often, law schools appear to be run by the mob — whether out of sympathy or spinelessness.” (“Colleges aren’t teaching students how to agree to disagree,” he said. “They’re teaching students how to destroy. And then they’re launching them into the world.”) He cited numerous examples, including Shapiro’s suspension at Georgetown, the shouting-down of law professor and author Josh Blackmun at City University of New York School of Law in 2018, and the “similar dynamics during law school talks” faced by “Judges David Stras and Patrick Bumatay of the Eighth and Ninth Circuits.”

The bigger problem, Ho worried, was that “our whole country has now become a campus.” With academic trends trickling out into mainstream American society, he argued,

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cancel culture now plagues a wide variety of institutions. I’ve written judicial opinions noting how cancel culture has infected our educational institutions, the legal profession, corporate America, and public health — and how even the criminal justice system has been weaponized to cancel disfavored political viewpoints. Cancel culture is also deeply embedded in journalism, entertainment, sports, and the arts.

The consequences for America are significant. I would contend that cancel culture is one of the leading reasons why citizens no longer trust a wide variety of once-leading institutions. It turns out that, when elite institutions make clear that people who think like you and me shouldn’t even exist, we return the favor.

After discussing the various examples of attempts to silence dissident voices on law-school campuses across the country, Ho zeroed in on the specific instances of cancel culture at Yale Law. Judge Bill Pryor “was disrupted by loud angry law students in the classroom”; “Kristen Waggoner of the Alliance Defending Freedom and Monica Miller of the American Humanist Association” faced a disruption that “became so intense” the police officers present at the event “had to call for backup” and “escort the panelists out of the building and into a squad car,” while the associate dean, who “was present throughout the entire event, . . . did nothing”; and “Yale administrators threatened to destroy” the career of “a law student [who] sent an invitation for a party that referred to his apartment as a ‘trap house’” if the student “didn’t apologize,” telling “him his membership in the Federalist Society was ‘very triggering for students.’”

 

“It turns out that, when elite law schools like Yale teach their students that there are no consequences to their intolerance and illiberalism,” Ho said, “the message sticks with them.”

The first way to fight back against these trends, Ho argued, is “to speak out against cancel culture as citizens. We can stand up for free speech, for open and rigorous debate, and for tolerance of opposing viewpoints.” But that alone isn’t enough: “We’re not just citizens. We’re also customers. Customers can boycott entities that practice cancel culture. . . . I wonder how a law school would feel, if my fellow federal judges and I stopped being its customers. Instead of millions of customers, there are only 179 authorized federal circuit judgeships, and 677 authorized federal district judgeships.”

Refusing to hire law clerks from Yale would strike at the heart of the illiberal culture in the nation’s premier legal institutions, Ho argued: “Yale presents itself as the best, most elite institution of legal education. Yet it’s the worst when it comes to legal cancellation.” The school “sets the tone for other law schools, and for the legal profession at large. I certainly reserve the right to add other schools in the future. But my sincere hope is that I won’t have to. My sincere hope is that, if nothing else, my colleagues and I will at least send the message that other schools should not follow in Yale’s footsteps.”

Ho’s message to law schools was clear: “If they want the closed and intolerant environment that Yale embraces today, that’s their call. But I want nothing to do with it.”

Kudos to Mr. Ho and his brave stance against cancel culture.

 

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NYU Chemistry Professor Fired After Students Said His Class Was Too Hard

https://reason.com/2022/10/03/maitland-jones-jr-organic-chemistry-nyu-fired/

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Maitland Jones Jr. was a professor of chemistry at Princeton University. In 2007, he semi-retired and began teaching organic chemistry at New York University on an adjunct basis.

Not anymore: NYU has fired Jones after students circulated a petition protesting that his class was too hard.

But according to Jones, the students weren't putting in enough effort—and had become disengaged, anxious, and indolent as a result of the pandemic.

"They weren't coming to class, that's for sure," said Jones. "They weren't watching the videos, and they weren't able to answer the questions."

Jones is profiled in a recent New York Times article that chronicles his firing. The piece also raises uncomfortable questions about elite institutions of higher learning and their utter devotion to appeasing unreasonable student demands. Organic chemistry is the bane of medical students everywhere, precisely because it is such a hard class. But many doctors would argue that that's the point: The class is designed to act as an effective gatekeeper, preventing underqualified students from entering the field of medicine.

"This article made my skin crawl," tweeted Alice Dreger, a bioethicist and former professor of medical humanities.* "We aren't going to end up with good doctors by letting undergrad pre-meds pass organic chem because universities want to protect their US News rankings."

According to The New York Times, 82 of Jones' 350 students signed the petition last spring; it alleged that too many of them were failing and that this was unacceptable. The students cited emotional and mental health complaints to make the case that Jones ought to make the class less difficult.

"We urge you to realize that a class with such a high percentage of withdrawals and low grades has failed to make students' learning and well-being a priority and reflects poorly on the chemistry department as well as the institution as a whole," the petition read.

The Times article suggests that throughout the pandemic, Jones made a number of accommodations for struggling students. He reduced the difficulty of his exams, but students were still failing them.

"Students were misreading exam questions at an astonishing rate," said Jones.

The article does note that the petition never called for Jones to be fired. But the university evidently decided that the best way to resolve the situation was to turn him loose.

His departure is certainly a loss for NYU's academic caliber. After all, Jones is a lion in the field of organic chemistry, publishing 225 papers in his 40-year career. He literally wrote the textbook, "Organic Chemistry," which weighs in at 1,300 pages.

"[Jones] learned to teach during a time when the goal was to teach at a very high and rigorous level," Paramjit Arora, a professor of chemistry at NYU and former colleague of Jones told The Times. "We hope that students will see that putting them through that rigor is doing them good."

NYU clearly feels differently about the matter.

"NYU had in Professor Maitland Jones a faculty member with a one-year appointment specifically to teach organic chemistry," wrote John Beckman, a spokesperson for NYU, in a statement to Reason. "In one of his organic chemistry classes in the spring 2022 there were, among other troubling indicators, a very high rate of student withdrawals, a student petition signed by 82 students, course evaluations scores that were by far the worst not only among members of the Chemistry Department but among all the University's undergraduate science courses, and multiple student complaints about his dismissiveness, unresponsiveness, condescension, and opacity about grading."

Beckman continued:

So, what exactly would be the argument for renewal of this appointment? NYU has lots of hard courses and lots of tough graders among the faculty - they don't end up with outcomes like this. Surely, among the many things a university should stand up for - including academic freedom, academic rigor, and a robust research enterprise - one of them should be good teaching. Good teaching shouldn't be pitted against rigor as an excuse for poor teaching; good teaching and rigor are perfectly compatible, and the latter is not a threat to the former at NYU.

But the question isn't whether students deserve good teachers—of course, they do—but whether good teachers should feel compelled to pass students who fail to demonstrate mastery of an extraordinarily important and complex subject matter.

"Celebrated organic chemistry professor Maitland Jones Jr. had high standards, and we can't have that in 2022," writes the leftist author and teacher Freddie deBoer. "NYU students—who are, by any rational measure, some of the most privileged people on planet earth—organized a petition and got him fired. I hope you never get treated by one of the doctors who emerges from this mess."

Agreed. I hope I never get treated by one of those "doctors" as well.

 

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PayPal Says It Won't Fine Users $2,500 for Misinformation, but It Will Fine Them for 'Intolerance'

https://reason.com/2022/10/10/paypal-misinformation-fine-hate-censorship/

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PayPal is a company that facilitates financial transactions. Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, billionaire entrepreneurs who have both talked about the importance of free speech and civil liberties, have been involved in the company at various stages.

Last week, PayPal rolled out an updated user agreement.

That agreement prohibits "the sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials" that "present a risk to user safety or wellbeing" or contain "misinformation." The policy notes that what counts as misinformation is at PayPal's "sole discretion." Violate the policy, and PayPal can deduct $2,500 from the offending user's account.

That's $2,500 per infraction. Someone who spreads quite a bit of so-called misinformation could stand to lose a great deal of money.

PayPal has now backtracked.

"An AUP notice recently went out in error that included incorrect information," a PayPal spokesperson said. "PayPal is not fining people for misinformation and this language was never intended to be inserted in our policy."

That's a welcome clarification, because the policy as written was deeply misguided.

Efforts to police misinformation are prone to significant error and overreach. Governments, media organizations, and tech platforms have all made serious attempts to limit the spread of misinformation by cracking down on speech they thought was wrong or dangerous—but time and time again, these measures have resulted in censorship of legitimate discourse.

Facebook, for instance, took great pains to prevent users from theorizing that COVID-19 emerged from a lab. Twitter faced pressure from the Biden administration to purge accounts that criticized the mainstream consensus on vaccines, masks, and other subjects. YouTube's policies prohibited content creators from spreading so-called COVID-19 misinformation, including statements like "masks don't work" or "COVID-19 is no more dangerous than the flu." Some of those statements have more validity than others, but they're no longer considered outside the bounds of acceptable conversation. What the gatekeepers termed "misinformation" is now just information.

The government's so-called misinformation experts have performed no better than media organizations or social media platforms. Remember Nina Jankowicz, who was chosen as director of the Department of Homeland Security's Disinformation Governance Board? Though she had wrongly flagged the New York Post Hunter Biden laptop story as fake Russian nefariousness, the department picked her to advise elite law enforcement and national intelligence on misinformation trends.

It would be completely reasonable for PayPal users to fear that misguided misinformation policing might end up costing them money, and the company is well-advised to reverse course.

This incident inspired Eugene Volokh, a professor of law at UCLA and writer for The Volokh Conspiracy, to take a closer look at the policies PayPal already has in place. What he found alarmed him: PayPal prohibits "activities that…relate to…the promotion of hate, violence, racial or other forms of intolerance that is discriminatory or the financial exploitation of a crime."

 

Violating that policy can also result in a $2,500 fine. Volokh warns that sharply criticizing a religion or government officials could be construed as the promotion of hate—and could theoretically violate that policy.

"Sounds like a good reason to think twice about using PayPal," he writes. "I've just withdrawn the $1000+ I have in my PayPal account, and I'm starting the process of disentangling myself from the service to the extent possible."

PayPal is free to put in place whatever policies it thinks are best, but the company shouldn't be surprised if people don't trust it to correctly define terms like misinformation, hate, or intolerance—and, thus, take their business elsewhere.

I've mostly avoided using PayPal over the years, and now I'm glad that I did.  

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The Regime Debanks Kanye West: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-regime-debanks-kanye-west/

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This is very, very chilling:

image.png.b23f0689ba1a73b3285045d308170078.png

What Kanye West said about Jews was disgraceful and indefensible. But to de-bank him for it? I would love to see a full roster of JP Morgan Chase's clients, to see what kind of moral monsters a million times more wicked than a mentally ill pop star with ugly opinions about Jews, or who broadcast messages a million times nastier than "White Lives Matter" (which isn't nasty at all, but still), use their services without problems.

Like Candace Owens, I don't care what you think about Kanye West (I'm not a fan), you had better care, and care a lot, about the big bank doing this to him. This is not ultimately about Kanye West. What the bank has done is perfectly legal -- but it's a rudimentary social credit system. We're going to start seeing a lot more of it. I warned you about this in Live Not By Lies:

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C]ompanies like PayPal have used the guidance of the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center to make it impossible for certain right-of-center individuals and organizations—including the mainstream religious-liberty law advocates Alliance Defending Freedom—to use its services.Though the bank issued a general denial when asked, JPMorgan Chase has been credibly accused of closing the accounts of an activist it associates with the alt-right. In 2018, Citigroup and Bank of America announced plans to stop doing some business with gun manufacturers.

It is not at all difficult to imagine that banks, retailers, and service providers that have access to the kind of consumer data extracted by surveillance capitalists would decide to punish individuals affiliated with political, religious, or cultural groups those firms deem to be antisocial. Silicon Valley is well known to be far to the left on social and cultural issues, a veritable mecca of the cult of social justice. Social justice warriors are known for the spiteful disdain they hold for classically liberal values like free speech, freedom of association, and religious liberty. These are the kinds of people who will be making decisions about access to digital life and to commerce. The rising generation of corporate leaders take pride in their progressive awareness and activism.

More:

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As of this writing, the global online payments transfer system PayPal refuses to let white supremacist groups use its services. It’s hard to object to that, though First Amendment purists will feel some distress. But PayPal also stigmatizes some mainstream conservative groups. And as we have seen, some major banks now have policies that deny service to firearms manufacturers and sellers—this, even though guns are legal to make and to own under the Second Amendment. Note well that the government did not force these giant financial firms to adopt these policies. What is to stop private entities that control access to money and markets from redlining individuals, churches, and other organizations they deem to be bad social actors from denying access to commerce?

Live Not By Lies came out in paperback yesterday. I've you've put off reading it, now's the time. Here is a link to a free, downloadable study guide. You and/or your group will find that helpful. The things I was predicting in 2020, when the book was first published, are now coming true. We are not going to have forever to prepare. Normal people find it so difficult to imagine this stuff happening in America. But it is! At the Lutheran pastors' conference I was at earlier this week, I gave a LNBL talk. Afterwards, a pastor came up to me in the hallway and said that he thought maybe I was exaggerating about Central Bank Digital Currencies -- it sounds paranoid, I know -- but he googled information about it, and discovered that Joe Biden issued an executive order pushing them.

Things people never imagined would happen in America are happening right now, every day. In Michigan this week, I learned that Prop 3, the pro-abortion constitutional amendment on the ballot this November, carries within it something devastating. From The Federalist:

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In less than one month, if Proposal 3 passes, children will have a right under the Michigan constitution to walk into one of Planned Parenthood’s 12 so-called “gender affirming” facilities in the state and, without parental knowledge or consent, obtain puberty blockers. And with Planned Parenthood of Michigan promising “gender affirming” care “via telehealth in the coming months,” Michiganders’ kids won’t even need to leave their house to obtain these sterilizing drugs. 

Passage of Prop 3 will also give boys a constitutional right to be castrated and girls the right under Michigan’s constitution to be sterilized by way of a hysterectomy or the removal of their ovaries — all without their parents’ consent.

Deceptive marketing by Planned Parenthood and far-left politicians, such as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, hides this reality from Michigan voters, leading Prop 3 to be uniformly referred to as “the abortion amendment” even though the expansive language of the proposed constitutional amendment reaches far beyond abortion. And on abortion alone, notwithstanding proponents’ claims that “passing this amendment simply restores the same protections that Michiganders had for five decades under Roe v. Wade,” Prop 3 goes far beyond the controlling Roe-Casey precedent: If passed, the constitutional amendment would create an extreme regime in Michigan of abortion on demand, at any time, for any reason, without informed or parental consent, and paid for by taxpayers. 

The expansive and legalistically worded language of Prop 3, crafted by Planned Parenthood and left-wing backers, however, extends beyond abortion to create a constitutional right to several aspects of what transgender activists call “gender-affirming care,” despite it being neither affirming nor caring. And Prop 3 extends that right to all individuals, including children. 

This is not merely a political point, and it is not a worst-case-scenario argument based on how some liberal activist judge or justice might interpret Prop 3. This reality flows from the plain language of Prop 3 and rests on general legal principles of constitutional construction.

Take a look at this compelling video the Lutherans of Michigan have made to educate voters about what Prop 3 means:

 

 

Auron Macintyre is right:

image.png.1d8722847baeae672eba36fdcfb2434a.png

De-banking people, making it harder for them to buy and sell. Passing laws that eliminate parental authority when minors want to chemically or surgically alter their bodies for reasons of gender ideology. This is our country now. We are Babylon. Why are so many of us so damn passive in the face of this evil?

Iain McGilchrist talked on a podcast the other day about how the King of England's ambassador to the Netherlands wrote long, detailed letters back to London, describing Puritan mobs rampaging through cities, smashing statues, burning books, and so forth. McGilchrist said the oddest thing is that these radicals were relatively small in number -- but the streets were lined with spectators who far outnumbered the vandals, who simply watched passively. That's us, you know.

Anyway, for those who want to have a clue about how to live with resilience and integrity through the trials to come, I hope you will consider reading Live Not By Lies -- and then coming together with your local friends, and making plans. I was texting earlier today with a friend in Poland, who told me that he and his friends are starting to do so, in anticipation of civil unrest there.

"Because you're worried about people taking to the streets this winter because they're tired of being cold and hungry?" I asked.

Yes, he said. "When it unravels in the West," he added, "it will go fast."

 

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  • 11 months later...

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s answer to a gay kid asking for advice when MLK wrote an advice column in Ebony:

“Your problem is not at all an uncommon one. However, it does require careful attention. The type of feeling that you have toward boys is probably not an innate tendency, but something that has been culturally acquired. Your reasons for adopting this habit have now been consciously suppressed or unconsciously repressed. Therefore, it is necessary to deal with this problem by getting back to some of the experiences and circumstances that lead to the habit. In order to do this I would suggest that you see a good psychiatrist who can assist you in bringing to the forefront of conscience all of those experiences and circumstances that lead to the habit. You are already on the right road toward a solution, since you honestly recognise the problem and have a desire to solve it.”

Should Dr. King's statue be removed now?  He was obviously a homophobe......Incidentally, this article lists a whole bunch of very prominent and celebrated people that would need cancelling......

https://www.lowellsun.com/2020/07/19/whos-next-on-the-cancel-culture-docket-martin-luther-king-jr/

John Wayne’s 1971 Playboy magazine interview has placed the legendary actor in the crosshairs of today’s cancel culture social justice warriors. Activists demand that his name be removed from an Orange County, California, airport.

What did Wayne say 49 years ago? He said: “I believe in white supremacy until the Blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don’t believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people.” He added, “I don’t feel guilty about the fact that five or 10 generations ago, these people were slaves.”

Wayne’s son Ethan does not defend his father’s words, but asks for perspective: “There’s no excuse for the words he said. It was 1971; we used different words back then. It was a different time.”

Does this new standard apply, for example, to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.? King wrote an advice column carried by the popular Black monthly magazine, Ebony. A closeted gay teenager wrote him:

Question: “My problem is different from the ones most people have. I am a boy, but I feel about boys the way I ought to feel about girls. I don’t want my parents to know about me. What can I do? Is there any place where I can go for help?”

Answer: “Your problem is not at all an uncommon one. However, it does require careful attention. The type of feeling that you have toward boys is probably not an innate tendency, but something that has been culturally acquired. Your reasons for adopting this habit have now been consciously suppressed or unconsciously repressed. Therefore, it is necessary to deal with this problem by getting back to some of the experiences and circumstances that lead to the habit. In order to do this I would suggest that you see a good psychiatrist who can assist you in bringing to the forefront of conscience all of those experiences and circumstances that lead to the habit. You are already on the right road toward a solution, since you honestly recognise the problem and have a desire to solve it.”

For this advice, which today would be called offensive and homophobic, should we cancel King?

Recall the furor when President Donald Trump reportedly referred to Haiti and some African countries as “s—-hole countries.” President John Kennedy, according to former New York Times investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, made a similar remark. In “The Dark Side of Camelot,” Hersh described an angry Kennedy reacting to a request from a man who had not supported his election yet nevertheless wanted a high-profile diplomatic assignment in the Kennedy administration. The president exploded, “I’m going to f—- him,” adding, “I’m going to send him to one of those boogie republics in Central Africa.” Boogie republics?

What about Kennedy’s treatment of Sammy Davis Jr.? The popular entertainer campaigned tirelessly for JFK in 1960, even agreeing to postpone his wedding to a white actress to avoid alienating potential Kennedy voters. Burt Boyar, Davis’ biographer, said that when Davis got married following Kennedy’s election, Kennedy rewarded him by disinviting Davis from attending, let alone performing at, the inaugural.

Downtown Atlanta prominently displays a statue of Andrew Young, the former Atlanta mayor and the first Black ambassador to the United Nations. A friend and colleague of MLK, Young was with King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where King was assassinated. Young later became a spokesperson for a Walmart advocacy group. In a 2006 interview with a Black newspaper, Young addressed the complaint that Walmart displaces mom and pop stores, many of which are owned by Arabs:

“Well, I think they should; they ran the mom and pop stores out of my neighborhood. But you see, those are the people who have been overcharging us — selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they’ve ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it’s Arabs. Very few Black people own these stores.” Young later apologized, but Walmart dropped him as a spokesperson. Should his statue be torn down?

Harry Truman often referred to Jews as “k—-s” and New York City as “k—-town.” In a 1911 letter to his future wife, the future president wrote: “Uncle Will says that the Lord made a white man from dust, a n——- from mud, then he threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman. He does hate Chinese and Japs. So do I. It is race prejudice, I guess. But I am strongly of the opinion Negroes ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia and white men in Europe and America.” But, as president, Truman supported the creation of the modern state of Israel, and his support was crucial.

Robert Kennedy, as attorney general, authorized wiretaps on Martin Luther King Jr., a request made by the notorious FBI head, J. Edgar Hoover.

How far does this cancel culture purge go, and who’s next?

 

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2 hours ago, Muda69 said:

I have zero desire to ever listen to Mr. Sten.

 

Won't have to worry about that.  Its hard to even hear him through his triple mask and his eternal self-quarantine which includes bubble wrap.

Edited by temptation
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