#toronto leftists

[toronto-intifada]

Gigi, a Legal Observer for many protests in Toronto, speaking on police violence that she has witnessed over the past year at Defund N Disarm Dance Party in front of TPS headquarters. 31 concussions. Broken/fractured bones. Eye damage. Destruction/confiscation of accessibility devices. Who is responsible for getting civilians justice on these manners? Other cops.

In hearing this speech, Toronto Police decided to try and check the boxes of brutality Gigi was speaking on. They punched and shoved into the crowd of protestors multiple times, grabbed a First Nations Matriarch by her hair, shoving her head into the cement and gouging her eyes with fingers. After she screamed to get his finger out of her eye, the officer shoved it further in, twisting and pulling his finger across her eyeball - likely attempting to pop it. Multiple officers put their full weight on her, using the knee-on-neck technique.

She asks, "A First Nation Indian residential school genocide survivor... Where is the reconciliation..."

This act of brutality by a colonial force, attempting to permanently disfigure an Indigenous woman, is one of many abuses committed by Toronto Police Services.

[miiaspeaks]

A million times better than that trump pic imo. picture of the year.

from bloomberg

[avi-on-jumblr]

A grocery store in Toronto was targeted today (January 3 2024). It was set on fire, the windows were broken, and "free Palestine" was graffitied on the doors. The grocery store's name is "International Delicatessen Foods", and so its acronym IDF was part of its signage, which was likely the factor in the antisemitic attack. That, and/or the fact that the owner is Jewish.

According to officials, police and firefighters were called to the scene at about 6:00 a.m. on Wednesday. When firefighters arrived, they saw smoke coming from the rear. Fire crews entered the building and quickly extinguished the blaze. Gray said officers found the graffiti on the outside of the building at the same time that the fire was discovered. She said police suspect the incident was motivated by hate and believe it was committed "with bias or prejudice." "We're very early on in the investigation and I must highlight when I say it's organized, they didn't just happen upon this business. Let's be not silly here. These people have targeted this business and so that means they've been here before," she said.

[kharmii]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8XSE8gg63Y/?igsh=MW1vZmNwMXFkcG5jaw==

Just when I thought the Pro Palestine zealots couldn’t stoop lower, here they are, taking fake decapitated heads and kicking them like Hamas did to the murdered Israelis.

These people are sick in a way that actually can’t be cured. All of them would 100% become murderers, or already are honestly. This is not normal behavior. It’s depraved in a way that’s not only shocking to witness, but should wake EVERYONE’s self-protection instincts the fuck up.

Toronto is one of those shitholes up in Canada full of native homeless people dying of fentanyl in droves, -there's a Twitter somewhere that documents people dying in real time- while the powers that be flood it with 'cultural enrichers' who provide so much enrichment that people desiring an easier cost of living have to leave for an area not controlled by leftists.

It has always been said in political circles that SJW leftists are the most vicious nasty close-minded hateful people who accuse you of what they themselves are capable of. If you react to their antics with any other than a perpetual thousand-yard stare, then you get accused of being a 'potential right-wing domestic terrorist', even though incidents of right-wing shit-stirring are almost non-existent. Even when conservatives protest, they are less likely to leave behind piles of trash and property damage.

We're fighting a war that only the left is allowed to participate in. Everyone else has to stand around passively and endure whatever violence and browbeating they choose to hand out. Any pushback gets you labeled a violent bigoted Nazi (again, them accusing you of being what they are). The media-academia-law is on their side, so the only defense you have is to identify who the political zealots are and steer clear.

Side note: Matt Walsh did a video yesterday about lawfare against Elon Musk. He made the point that it's all women who make hostile work environment claims.

In my personal experience -maybe it's just me- women are more likely to harass you in the workplace. They are the ones making the snide comments or engaging in outright bullying. I've only ever been sexually harassed by other women. It's true I have a workplace stalker, but he has never ever made an inappropriate comment to me sexual in nature. None of them have touched me, but a few have gone into graphic detail about their sex lives or made lewd jokes, all the while giving me knowing looks expecting some sort of reaction. I'd stare at them deadpan like....I can't even guess what I'm supposed to say about this.

That pretty much sums up the leftwing experience. You can't even guess how to react because they believe that both morality and reality are fluid -the way they perceive gender- so there's no reliable sense of right and wrong or justice and fairness or concrete reality. We're held hostage by the whims of the Narcissistic dominant culture made up of emotionally driven toddlers who might say they are 3/4 male and 1/4 female on any given day.

In that context, it makes perfect sense to make a mockery of how Hamas murdered some random people at a music festival who were at the wrong place at the wrong time. They can side with murdering terrorists because they are brown and therefore not subject to the same sort of judgement you or I would face if we were to murder random people and kick around their severed heads.

[ashtonderoy]

What I think a Communist should be? A Criticism of Lenin.

Written by Ashton Deroy I’m a Communist! In an abstract way…. I will be imbedding this with links on Communist articles of interest. Last worked on 8/9/2023 at 7:06PM I don’t really care for this garbage though. Marxism does not call for you to worship at the feet of your Dictator. That was just how a Law School Drop out chose to interpret it. When he absorbed Progressive philosophy? Then…

[maryannmccarra-fitzpatrick]

#Toronto

#Canada

#DEI

#Ideologues

#KikeOjoThompson

#KikeOjo

#KikeThompson

#KOJO

#WelcomeToTheStruggleSession

Personnel connected with #KOJOInstitute of Toronto drove this man to suicide.

https://hotair.com/john-s-2/2023/07/24/toronto-principal-killed-himself-after-being-singled-out-during-dei-training-n566788

https://kojoinstitute.com/blog/

[kick-a-long]

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/ontario-jewish-business-vandalized-in-attack-that-caused-significant-damage

Apart from the obvious here; it was never about antizionism, like land back denial is even a valid argument to stand on and still claim not to be bigoted, but I digress.

Two attempts to spell one of the most common four letter words in the English speaking world and they failed both times.

Remember all eyes of 'Rahaf'? Morons.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Working class Dems who campaign on economics beat Trumpists in elections

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me FRIDAY NIGHT (Mar 22) in TORONTO, then SUNDAY (Mar 24) with LAURA POITRAS in NYC, then Anaheim, and more!

The Democratic Party Pizzaburger Theory of Electioneering is: half the electorate wants a pizza, the other half wants a burger, so we'll give them all a pizzaburger and make them all equally dissatisfied, thus winning the election:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/16/that-boy-aint-right/#dinos-rinos-and-dunnos

But no one wants a pizzaburger. The Biden administration's approach of letting the Warren/Sanders wing pick the antitrust enforcers while keeping judicial appointments in the Manchin-Synematic universe is a catastrophe in which progressive Dem regulators (who serve one term) are thwarted by corporatist Dem judges (who serve for life):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/14/making-good-trouble/#the-peoples-champion

The Democrats – like all parties in two-party systems – are a coalition; in this case, a "progressive" liberal-left coalition with liberals serving as senior partners, steering the party and setting its policies. These corporate dems like to color themselves as "neutral" technocrats with "realistic, apolitical" policies that represent what's best for the country:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/05/not-that-naomi/#if-the-naomi-be-klein-youre-doing-just-fine

This sets up the left wing of the party as the starry-eyed, unrealistic radicals whose policies are unpopular and will lose elections. But for a decade, grassroots-funded primary challenges have made it possible to test this theory, by putting leftist politicians on the ballot in front of voters, especially in tight races with far-right Republicans (that is, exactly the kinds of races that the corporate wing of the party says we can't afford to take chances on).

The 2022 midterms included enough races to start testing these theories – and, unlike traditional midterms, these races enjoyed high voter turnout, thanks to the unpopularity of GOP positions like abortion bans, book bans and anti-trans laws. Jacobin teamed up with the Center for Working-Class Politics, Yougov and the Center for Work and Democracy at ASU and analyzed those races:

https://images.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/11134429/CWCP-Report-2024.pdf

Their conclusion: candidates from working-class backgrounds who campaigned on economic policies like high-quality jobs, higher minimum wages, a jobs guarantee, ending offshoring and outsourcing, building infrastructure and bringing manufacturing back to the US won with a 50% share of the vote in rural and working-class districts. Dems who didn't lost with a 35% share of the vote:

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-03-18-how-actually-existing-democrats-run-for-office/

In other words, in the kinds of districts where Trumpist politicians are beating Democrats, running on "left populist" policies beats Trumpist politicians.

That's the good news: if Dems recruit leftist, working class politicians and put them up for office on policies that address the material reality of voters' lives, they can beat fascist GOP candidates.

Now for the bad news: the Democratic establishment has no interest in getting these candidates onto the ballot. Working-class candidates, by definition, lack the networks of deep-pocketed cronies who can fund their primary campaigns. Only 2.3% of Dem candidates come from blue-collar backgrounds (if you include "pink-collar" professions like nursing and teaching, the number goes up to 5.9%):

https://jacobin.com/2024/03/left-populists-working-class-voters

All of this confirms the findings of Trump's Kryoptonite, an earlier Jacobin/CWCP research project that polled working-class voters on preferences for hypothetical candidates, finding that working-class candidates with economically progressive policies handily beat out Republicans, including MAGA Republicans:

https://images.jacobinmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/08125102/TrumpsKryptonite_Final_June2023.pdf

Since the Clinton-Blair years, "progressives" have abandoned economic populism ("It's not a burning ambition for me to make sure that David Beckham earns less money" -T. Blair) and pursued a "third way" that seeks to replace half the world's of supply white, male oligarchs with diverse oligarchs from a variety of backgrounds and genders. We were told that this was done in the name of winning elections with "modern" policies that replaced old-fashioned ideas about decent pay, decent jobs, and worker power.

These policies have delivered a genocide-riven world on the brink of several kinds of existential catastrophe. They're a failure. The pizzaburger party didn't deliver safety, nor prosperity – and it also can't deliver elections.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/20/actual-material-conditions/#bread-and-butter

[reasonsforhope]

"In short: Nine million Canadian women of reproductive age will have the full cost of their contraception covered as part of a major health care reform, the government says.

The reform includes the most widely used contraceptive methods, such as IUDs, contraceptive pills, hormonal implants and the day after pill.

What's next? The government must still win the approval of Canada's provinces, which administer health care."

"Canada will cover the full cost of contraception for women, the government says as it highlights the first part of a major health care reform.

The government will pay for the most widely used contraceptive methods, such as IUDs, contraceptive pills, hormonal implants or the day after pill, for the nine million Canadian women of reproductive age, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Sunday at a press conference in a pharmacy in Toronto.

"Women should be free to choose the contraceptives they need without cost getting in the way. So, we're making contraceptives free," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on X, formerly Twitter.

The announcement fleshes out the first part of a bill unveiled in February that, once completed, would mark the biggest expansion of Canada's publicly funded health care system in decades.

This new regime will also cover the cost of diabetes medication for some 3.7 million Canadians.

The cost of the new system and timing of the launch have not been announced...

The government must now win the approval of Canada's provinces, which actually administer health care, for this new system. Alberta and Quebec have already said they would opt out.

The pharmacare plan — as it is called locally — follows protracted negotiations between Mr Trudeau's Liberal minority government and a small leftist faction in parliament.

The New Democratic Party agreed to prop up the Liberals until the fall of 2025, on the condition that the government immediately launch the drug program."

-via ABC News Australia, March 31, 2024

[thegayhimbo]

At this point, it's hard to tell if people like this are profoundly stupid, extremely lazy, deeply antisemitic (while trying to pretend they're not), or a combination of all three. 🙄

Since we're here, and this bozo wants examples of Antisemitism from the Left because they can't be arsed to do any research for themselves, here are some examples since the October 7th attack:

A Spike in Antisemitic Hate Crimes in London since the October 7th attack

Rise in Antisemitism in New York City

A man punching a woman for possibly being Jewish

Free Palestine users harassing a 97 year old Jewish Holocaust Survivor on TikTok (as well as bullying other Jews on social media)

Pro-Palestine protestors in Toronto attacking Jews

Threats to kill and rape Jewish students at Cornell University

Paris Subway Passengers screaming "Fuck The Jews......We are Nazis and Proud"

Twitter/X screenshots of Antisemitism from the Left

Leftist Tumblr users coming onto an Israeli LGBT woman's blog telling her "she deserves to die" (and other vile comments)

London Holocaust Library being defaced with Pro-Palestine slogans, and a Jewish Cemetery being defaced with a Nazi swastika and the ceremonial hall being set on fire

Bomb threats and attacks on Jewish synagogues

More reported cases of antisemitism

The latest cases of antisemitism (as of this week)

Jewish Students Assaulted (and Jewish Student Center Vandalized)

MSNBC calling out the rise in antisemitism on college campuses

Multiple attacks on Jews where people were either screaming "Kill the Jews" or "Gas the Jews" or defacing Holocaust memorials and other vile antisemitic acts

The infamous video of University Presidents who couldn't answer a simple "yes or no" question about whether calling for the genocide of Jews constitutes bullying and harassment

I could list other examples and links I have on file of Antisemitism from the Left (and I'm sure others can highlight examples I either didn't cover or might not know about), but I've made my point: If whenmagicfilledtheair actually gave a crap about this, they would have put in the work to look up these cases up for themselves. They are willfully turning a blind eye because it's convenient for them to do so.

whenmagicfilledtheair is antisemitic and doesn't want to own up to that. This also applies to others on the Left right now who are being downright sociopathic in their treatment of Jews.

[toronto-intifada]

(The Grind) asked three Palestinians in Toronto about their connection to Palestine, their experiences and reflections on the past year, and their thoughts on the future.

[technofeudalism]

i made a long post about how traditional media coalescing around Trump is scarier than social media for me and i included some news/media sources i recommend at the bottom. here they are (plus some additions) in a shorter post so that it is easier to share.

the objective is to build a network of local, national and global sources that you can count on. preferably completely independent and free from editorial or corporate oversight.

note: all media is flawed, including the ones below. never rely on one source. do not immediately accept something as the truth from any single source. everyone is capable of accidentally getting a detail wrong, or even deliberately misleading. the fact is that even reading something as inflammatory as Fox News can give you information you wouldn't be able to get anywhere else, the key is not to take any of it at face value.

Dropsite News - ran by Ryan Grim, Jeremy Scahill

The Intercept - sadly running out of money, alleged CIA ties

Democracy Now! - more center-left, better domestically

Jacobin - wide variety, sometimes shitty takes, Alex Press is great

The Grayzone - this one is controversial (mainly just to liberals) and they make no qualms about being committed to reporting from an anti-imperialist view of the world

Black Agenda Report - perspective from Black leftists. founded by Glen Ford (RIP), a Black Panther and accomplished investigative journalist

Hasan Piker - hate him, love him, neutral, doesn't matter. he's the largest independent political commentator on the left (by far), covering news and misinformation 9 hours a day. you can think he has shit takes, but he's still a reliable source and has been insanely accurate with his opinions

The Majority Report - been around forever, Sam Seder & Emma Vigeland are amazing, once home to the incredible Michael Jamal Brooks (RIP)

International Viewpoint - monthly English-language magazine of the Fourth International

Left Voice - socialist news site and magazine

It's Going Down - news, opinion, podcasts and reporting from an anarchist viewpoint

Sludge - investigative journalism on lobbying and money in politics

Socialist Alternative - democratic socialist news organization.

Socialist Project - Toronto-based organisation that supports the rebuilding of the socialist Left in Canada

The Progressive - leftist magazine operating since 1909

Truthdig - independent source for original reporting from a progressive viewpoint

Workers World - marxist news organization run by Workers World Party

Breakthrough News - untold stories of resistance from poor and working-class communities

Labor Notes - media and organizing project amplifying union activism

Ben Norton @ Global Political Economy

Erin Reed

Caitlin Johnstone (AUS)

do not rely on "media bias" sources like Ground News. they are part of the problem with making false equivalencies between left and right. this insightful blog post published a few days ago proves my point: "The data collected here shows that left-leaning stories tend to have far better sourcing than right-leaning ones, and are less politically polarized. The process for selecting, grouping, and summarizing these stories does not seem to take these differences into account, and there is little transparency into how that process works. This leads the platform to publish dodgy stories from the right, with the appearance that they are just as valid as high-fact reporting from the left or the center."

[mrs-stans]

Donald Trump might make the Oscar cut – but with Sebastian Stan playing him

TORONTO — In the Donald Trump biopic “The Apprentice,” famed New York lawyer Roy Cohn lays out three important rules to Trump, his young disciple: “Attack, attack, attack” is the first; “Admit nothing, deny everything” is the second; and “No matter what, claim victory and never admit defeat” is last.

For anybody who’s watched cable news in, oh, the last decade, that all seems pretty familiar. Trump became a cultural figure, first in business and then on NBC's competition show "The Apprentice" before taking the Oval Office. The controversial new movie charts the future 45th president’s rise in the 1970s and ‘80s, but includes echoes of his political era throughout. (“Make America Great Again” even makes an appearance.)

The Oscars also have rules, though it’s an unwritten one that comes to bear here: Play a real-life figure and you’ve got a decent shot at a nomination. Which is a boon for “Apprentice” stars Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong, who give outstanding performances as Trump and Cohn, respectively.

“The Apprentice” (in theaters Oct. 11), which had a surprise screening at the Toronto International Film Festival Thursday, starts with a young Trump working for his father Fred's real estate company. Donald dreams of opening a luxury hotel in Manhattan, but starts out going door to door collecting rent. He meets Cohn, who first helps the Trumps in court and then becomes a mentor to young Donald, who listens intently as Roy rails about civil rights, makes hateful remarks and says leftists are worse than Nazis.

Trump takes to heart Cohn’s advice ― there are only two kinds people in the world, “killers and losers” ― his hotel business takes off and turns him into a Manhattan power player. There’s a turn, however, and the movie focuses on how Donald’s confidence and cruelty takes hold. He cheats on wife Ivana (Maria Bakalova), rapes her in one of the film's most disturbing sequences, and shuns Cohn after he becomes sick and eventually dies from AIDS.

The most fascinating aspect of “Apprentice” is watching its leads change their characters and body language to drive home that cinematic shift. Stan starts out playing Trump as an awkward, lonely sort before taking on more of the mannerisms that we’ve seen on our national political stage in recent years. (Even though he doesn’t quite look like Trump, the voice and inflections are spot on.) Strong is initially a scary and discomforting presence before gradually turning more sympathetic as his disease sets in and Trump worries he’ll get sick just being around his former friend.

Granted, it’s not normal for a biopic about a presidential candidate, and a high-profile film-festival one at that, to arrive less than a month before the election. It likely won’t sway voters either way, whether they see Trump as monarch or monster, and Trump’s more likely to threaten legal action than show up to the Oscars. But the movie’s worth paying attention to because of its powerful acting, from Stan, Strong and Bakalova. (In a packed best-actor lineup, one of Stan’s biggest rivals will be himself, since he’s also phenomenal in this month's “A Different Man.”)

One of the best scenes, in which Trump and an ailing Cohn let each other have it with all the venom they can muster, wraps up a lot of the core themes in a movie filled with meta commentary. Trump’s screwed over Cohn, and the lawyer tells him “you were a loser then and you’re still a loser” and that he’s “lost the last traces of decency you had.”

“What can I say, Roy,” Trump snarls. “I learned from the best.”

[whileiamdying]

With Searing Political Drama ‘I’m Still Here,’ Walter Salles Delivers an Urgent Warning: ‘A Country Without Memory Is a Country Without a Future’

By Brent Lang

There was something about the Paiva family’s house that Walter Salles never forgot. It was a few blocks from the beach in Rio de Janeiro. The doors and gates were always unlocked, the windows open to let in sunlight and ocean breezes. It was filled with music and dancing, parties and people, debates and ideas. But that all changed in 1971 when Rubens Paiva, a former leftist congressman turned engineer, was hauled away by the police or the military (it wasn’t initially clear) to be interrogated, tortured and, eventually, murdered. That left his wife Eunice and their five children to pick up the pieces and search for answers something in short supply since Brazil was seven years into a military dictatorship that would last for 14 more.

“There was such a vitality to the house. It was a place we all wanted to drift through,” says Salles, who was a teenager when he would visit the family. “Then one day when we went by, it was completely closed and there was police guarding it. You can imagine the shock.”

Salles grew up to become one of Brazil’s greatest filmmakers, spending much of his career dramatizing his country’s slow, often slouching, move towards democracy in films like “Central Station.” But “I’m Still Here,” which documents that harrowing period in the lives of the Paivas, may be his most personal yet, as it deals with people he grew up knowing so intimately. What he’s pulled off is nothing short of a triumph, as well as an urgent reminder of the dangers of authoritarianism. The film debuted to raves at the Venice Film Festival, with critics citing Fernanda Torres’ performance as Eunice as Oscar-worthy. It screens at this year’s Toronto Film Festival before Sony Pictures Classics releases the movie domestically this fall.

Though the movie deals with an explosive subject matter, Salles took an understated approach to the production. He resisted in close-ups, push-ins or other camera moves that would have heightened the tension in a melodramatic way. “I wasn’t trying to amplify emotions,” he says. “I wanted to be truthful.”

And he takes time getting to Rubens’ disappearance, following the parents and the kids over summer days spent on the beach, evenings at the ice cream shop and social occasions where Eunice’s famous soufflés were in demand. “You had to allow the life to breathe in,” Salles says. “In the beginning, I want to invite you to be sensorially in a family.”

The goal was to make it clear how much joy was snuffed out when Rubens was “disappeared.” To help the actors get into the proper emotional state, he shot the picture chronologically. It was a logistical nightmare for a movie shot on location, since shifts in weather or availability often necessitate filming things out of sequence. “It allowed me to get into my character’s skin,” says Torres. “You had this sunny part of the movie with children and parties and friends. Then it’s all taken away and you are filled with this sense of loss. I felt like I, Fernanda, had experienced that.”

Salles encouraged Torres to underplay Eunice’s grief and anxiety, reminding her that her character needs to keep it together for the sake of her young children. “She remains in silence,” Torres says. “She cannot just panic. She doesn’t have time for self-pity. But there’s something profound about her actions. When something violent was happening to her, she stayed calm. She smiled. She didn’t show she was suffering.”

The Paivas begin the film comfortably middle class, but Rubens’ disappearance plunges them into economic uncertainty. Without a death certificate (something Brazilian authorities took decades to grant the family), Eunice had no access to her family’s money and was forced to sell everything and start over. She went back to school and became a human rights attorney.

“Her journey blended with the journey of Brazil as it sought to redefine itself,” Salles says. 

That journey continued during the seven tumultuous years that Salles labored on the script and then in cobbling together the film. It was a period that saw Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing aspiring strongman, win the presidency, only to lose office in a tight contest four years later against Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In scenes eerily reminiscent of the Jan. 6 riots, Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed Brazilian government buildings, radicalized by his claims of election fraud.

“We started this project thinking that we were retelling a story from the past, but we came to realize that it was also a reflection on our present,” Salles says. “We have to remind ourselves of what happened. Cinema can be a powerful instrument to push against those forces — to help us avoid oblivion. A country without memory is a country without a future. “

[dwelling-on-downtowns]

if I had the opportunity to go back in time to beat up any one historical figure, it would be henry ford.

at first thought, I figured it would be henry kissinger because you know. it’s henry kissinger. but I quickly decided against it, because in this hypothetical, everybody is being given this opportunity and any good leftist hates henry kissinger so the line to get a shot at him would be so fucking long and at that point why bother.

so I swung back too far and considered rob ford briefly, he’s less well-known and would have a much shorter line, but the scale of his damage is limited to the ripple effects of the what he did to toronto and I figure there’s enough people in toronto to deal with him. I’m not even from toronto. (similarly, new yorkers can take care of robert moses)

the happy medium is ultimately henry ford. there would probably still be a line but much more manageable than henry kissinger, and much more satisfying than rob ford.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Allan Stratton

Published: Jul 23, 2023

Toronto is one of the most tolerant, multicultural cities in the world. And yet, according to many of its progressive journalists, academics, and politicians, it’s actually a den of systemic racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. Unless you’re a straight white man, daily life is supposedly an exhausting and dangerous struggle. If you live in the United States, the UK, Australia, or elsewhere in Canada, I’m guessing you’ve been told similar things about your own society.

I’m a gay man for whom these reports bear no relationship to the real world. Certainly, hate-crime statistics show a sharp increase in physical and verbal abuse against specific demographics, including my own. And there are even rare incidents of murder and arson. But to suggest that minorities live under constant threat from a bigoted majority is apocalyptic nonsense. This is especially true of Canada, an especially open, diverse, and welcoming country. Western nations, more generally, are incontrovertibly the most tolerant on the planet.

My heretical view (among fellow progressives, at least) may be due to my “positionality” (this being a faddishly woke jargon term that most English speakers would call “perspective”). The Holocaust and the internment of Japanese North Americans ended a mere six years before I was born. The pass system that turned Canadian Indigenous reservations into open-air prison camps was still in force. The United States was segregated by Jim Crow and redlining. Cross burnings and lynchings went unpunished. Marital rape was legal. Spousal abuse and unequal pay were commonplace. Gay sex and cross-dressing were criminalized, with outed individuals losing their jobs and children. “Fag bashing” was treated as public entertainment.

In the relatively few decades since, western governments have implemented universal civil and human rights protections for racial and sexual minorities. The speed and depth of this transformation has been so remarkable that it seems inconceivable that we ever lived as we once did. Has any other culture critiqued its failings and set about reforming itself so quickly?

This is not to suggest that everything is sunshine and lollipops. Human nature has not been repealed. Police departments without effective civilian oversight, for instance, continue to invite corruption and abuse. Nonetheless, we now have the tools to press for accountability, such as human rights tribunals and whistleblower protections.

It’s also important to acknowledge that while the relative increase in reported hate crimes may seem shocking, that rise is based on a remarkably low baseline. For instance, 2021 saw a 65 per cent increase in incidents (over 50 per cent of these comprising verbal slurs) targeting Canada’s LGB and T communities. But that still represents just 423 cases in a country of 40-million people. That’s hardly a “tsunami of hate.” The number is infinitesimal compared to the 114,132 domestic assaults and 34,242 sexual assaults recorded against women.

One often hears that a reversion to the backward ways of the past is just around the corner. And it is true that abortion rights now hang in the balance in many conservative U.S. states. But the idea that any Western country (especially Canada) is on the cusp of a wholesale rejection of liberal principles is absurd. Women will never again need their husband’s signature to open a bank account. Racial segregation is unthinkable (except, ironically, in certain progressive institutions). Marriage equality for same-sex couples is constitutionally protected in North America, and enjoys a historic 70 per cent level of support in the United States.

So, unlike those on the left who came of age in the 90s and the decades that followed, I don’t see an intolerant society destroying civil rights and minority safety. Rather, what I am now witnessing is a period of progressive overreach, led by ideologues with no (apparent) historical memory or understanding of how our liberal social contract evolved. They have turned language inside out so as to render words such as “woman,” “safety,” and “genocide” essentially meaningless; pursued policies that lock one-time progressive allies in a zero-sum culture-war conflict; recast free speech as hate speech; confused wishes (and, in some cases, fantasies) with rights; and punished dissenters from their Borg-think with social exclusion, “re-education,” and firing.

This radical attempt to unilaterally impose a new social order based on race and gender essentialism has ignited a widespread public backlash, which has been weaponized by the far right, destroyed public goodwill, and done more damage to the progressive cause than anything its reactionary enemies have done in recent years.

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The civil-rights movements of the last century won victories by liberal means based on liberal values. This included an insistence on free speech and civil liberties; and an appeal to the universal values of dignity and equality, which in turn underpin the case for protecting individual human rights and freedoms.

In part, this was because we liberals understood math. We needed white, straight, male legislators to support our causes, a project that could only be engaged through free and open debate. Empathy-based co-operation enabled us to create bridges among our diverse groups: The Gay Liberation Front raised money for the Black Panthers. In turn, its leader, Huey Newton, supported the gay liberation and women’s liberation movements. Meanwhile, Jewish groups applied their historical understanding of discrimination to help lead the fights for women’s rights (Betty Friedan), gay rights (Larry Kramer), and black voting rights, with some even giving their lives as Freedom Riders

By contrast, today’s illiberal left explicitly rejects the principles of free speech and universality. It ignores the lessons of past civil-rights successes, often denying that such successes even took place. After all, how can one insist on the dismantling (or “decolonization”) of a system that has shown itself capable of self-correction and continuous improvement? The only framework that validates the progressive narrative of ongoing oppression and white supremacy is one that ahistorically presents mainstream liberal values as a failure.

The switch in social-justice circles from liberal to authoritarian ends and means has at least three major causes. The first is structural: As (originally) liberal rights groups such as the ACLU achieved their objectives, they were required to rewrite their mission statements and pretend away their past successes — this being the only way to justify their ongoing existence.

Far from seeking to “burn it all down,” most of us within the original LGB and T movements simply wanted equality within existing social structures. We used liberal “respectability politics” to make our case, and (for the most part) folded our tents when we achieved our goal. The unwitting effect of this was to leave our old organizations to the radicals, who had long condemned us as sellouts to the patriarchy. Their goal is nothing less than the remaking — or “queering” — of society, a vaguely defined project infused with a deep suspicion of, or even hostility to, capitalism and the nuclear family. The liberal LGB and T wish to live and let live is now the authoritarian “live as we live.”

The second factor is generational change. Just as children separate from their parents in their passage to adulthood, so does each generation define itself in contradistinction to its immediate predecessor. Without personal memory of past struggles, present conditions are taken for granted. And so the battle against current injustices (real or otherwise) is seen as humanity’s defining and timeless struggle.

My generation mocked our parents’ conformity and stoic, suck-it-up ethos, forgetting that these traits had been necessary social adaptations during the Great Depression and World War II. Similarly, activists of this generation attack our commitment to free speech and integration within society, forgetting that these strategies were necessary for us to be heard during the Cold War, when outsiders were suspected as potential fifth columnists.

But perhaps the most significant factor has been the academic trend toward postmodernism, which instructs adherents that neither objective reality nor human nature exist in any certain, provable way. Reason, logic, and objective facts are rejected — or at least put in scare quotes — as are appeals to history and science. These are all held to be mere artifacts of language, which is itself presented as a reflection of existing power structures. And since these structures are presumed to systematically oppress the powerless, they must be deconstructed, dismantled, and decolonized, root and branch.

This kind of thinking isn’t just claptrap that flies in the face of day-to-day human experience. It also encourages a kind of intellectual nihilism that precludes amelioration of the injustices and power imbalances that supposedly concern many postmodern thinkers: After all, what could possibly replace our current power-based intellectual constructs except new power-based intellectual constructs?

Nonetheless, postmodern habits of mind (often flying under the banner of “critical” studies of one kind or another) have infected academic humanities and social science departments all over the west, much like the fungal parasite on The Last of Us. Its professorial hosts now work to dismantle their own institutions, attacking the “colonial” concepts of science and empiricism in favour of undefined and unfalsifiable “ways of knowing.” Meanwhile, their students have incubated its spores and spread them into the wider society, including corporate human-rights offices.

Progressives (rightly) have denounced Donald Trump and his supporters for their paranoid belief that the 2020 U.S. election was “stolen.” But these right-wing conspiracy theorists are not so different from campus leftists when it comes to their à la carte approach to accepting or rejecting reality according to passing ideological convenience

In particular, the idea that pronouns serve as magic spells that can turn a man into a (literal) women is no less ridiculous than anything Trump has ever said. The same goes for the mantra that while girls who cut themselves need therapy, girls seeking a double mastectomy require “affirmation.” Likewise: Racial segregation is a bigoted practice … except when it represents the very acme of progressive enlightenment. “Defund the police” doesn’t mean abolish the police, except when it means exactly that.

And then there’s Schrödinger’s Antifa, which presents these street thugs either as a very real force that rose up as a morally laudable reaction to fascism … or as something that exists only in Tucker Carlson’s fever dreams, depending on context.

But postmodernism and critical theory have done more than just damage our societies’ intellectual cohesion. Their denial of universal human nature eliminates empathy as a tool to bridge differences among groups, which are instead presented as warring sects prosecuting unbridgeable race (or gender) feuds. Since power is presented as the singular currency of the realm, the ability to shut the other side up is valued more than the ability to persuade it.

Gay men such as Andrew Sullivan and Andrew Doyle have been among the most prominent dissenters against wokeism — in part because we instinctively recognize the destructive nature of this power-fixated mindset. Our experience suggests that empathy and reason are far more important than threats and cultural power plays.

Dave Chappelle has said that the LGBT movement won public support more quickly than its black counterpart because of racism. But I believe the truth is different: Unlike racial and ethnic minorities, we exist in every demographic, every family, every ethnic category. When we gay men came out en masse during the 1980s AIDS pandemic, all communities realized that we were among its children, parents, and siblings. People have a harder time discriminating against their own than against outsiders.

Traditionally, the left has appealed to a sense of camaraderie and shared purpose. The resulting project of alliance-building has entailed negotiation among different groups, all of which may have different priorities and perspectives. But that alliance-building project becomes impossible when one sect or another demands that disagreement be treated as a form of thoughtcrime. Deplatforming doesn’t just hurt the target; it also hurts the movement, since the summary excommunication of dissidents means that adherents never need to acknowledge or address counterarguments, internal logical inconsistencies, or the off-putting nature of their message.

Indeed, ideologues such as Nikole Hannah-Jones claim that politics has a colour: Blacks who aren’t “politically black” are traitors who collaborate with “whiteness.” As seen through this lens, Asian-Americans who fight anti-Asian discrimination in the context of affirmative action are supposedly puppets of white supremacists, and the LGB Alliance, by standing up for same-sex attraction, is smeared as a transphobic hate group. (For asserting that biology is real, Stonewall UK even tried to destroy the career of one of the LGB Alliance’s founders, Allison Bailey, a lifelong social justice advocate who happens to be a black, working-class lesbian, and the child of immigrant parents. Thankfully, Stonewall did not prevail.)

Opponents of cancel culture often focus on its negative effects on conservatives. But it’s often woke organizations that end up imploding under its strains, typically due to internal battles over victimhood status and linguistic control. In recent years, many of these groups have been driven off the rails by single-issue gender activists who are willing to support misogyny and homophobia in the name of trans rights; or BLM activists willing to permit racism directed at “model minorities.” Even antisemites have been allowed to infiltrate left-wing political parties, the arts establishment, and anti-racist education initiatives. No wonder everyone involved with this movement is always complaining about how emotionally “exhausted” they are: They’re surrounded by toxic fellow travellers who gaslight them as right-stooges if they dare raise a complaint.

Another notable feature of militant social-justice movements is the sheer joylessness of their leaders and supporters, a condition that often seems to blur into a collectively embraced state of clinical depression and paranoia. This posture flows from their presupposition that they suffer endlessly due to the malignant primordial character of “whiteness” and heteronormativity (or, yet worse, cisheteronormativity). The language of individual agency and hope, which animates liberalism, is replaced with a soul-dead idiom by which the activist presents as a self-pitying victim of oppression, constantly at risk of suicidal ideation, erasure, and genocide.

Even privileged “allies” are encouraged to dwell on their whiteness, straightness, cisness, “settler” status, and other marks of intersectional Cain. By erasing the possibility of redemption, the movement alienates liberal allies who are seeking to build bridges with others en route to living successful and fulfilling lives in a way that escapes the politics of identity. The social-justice puritan, being primarily concerned with advancing his status within a cultish inward-seeking subculture that’s constantly inventing new grievances, on the other hand, finds such a goal unthinkable.

The use of words such as “harm” and “violence” to describe the microaggressions known to the rest of us as “daily life” is a particularly unattractive feature of social-justice culture. In the 1980s, gays and lesbians responded to daily discrimination with the chant, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.” Today, the children and grandchildren of that generation, now enjoying full civil rights and perches within elites sectors of government, culture, and high society, instead tell us, “We’re here, we’re queer, and … we’re terrified to step outside.” As a gay man, it’s humiliating to hear this kind of maudlin rhetoric uttered in my name.

The broad public, long sympathetic and accommodating, has had it. People have no time for hysterical activists who whine, bully, and hector them about things they didn’t do and over which they have no control. This is particularly true when those same activists demand the elimination of women’s sex-based rights, the medical sterilization of children and teens, and the explicit exclusion of job applicants by race. The more that ordinary men and women came to learn about gay marriage, the more they accepted it. By contrast, the more that ordinary men and women come to learn about trans-activist demands and critical race theory, the more they’ve become repulsed.

Support for Black Lives Matter collapsed when the woke trivialized the arson and looting that accompanied the George Floyd protests. The public was completely onside with the left’s demand for police reform, but horrified by the extremist push to dismantle public security, and enraged that the left justified breaking pandemic restrictions for protests while insisting that grieving families be kept from their dying relatives in hospitals.

Likewise, Lia Thomas tanked support on gender radicalism. The public had long welcomed trans civil rights, sympathized with those suffering dysphoria, and accepted that even non-dysphoric trans-identified individuals should be able to live and present as they wished. But the sight of a strapping, butch male taking women’s prizes and opportunities was a breaststroke too far.

Facing resistance, the woke doubled down, insisting on automatic gender affirmation for everyone, including rapists and children. The result gifted social conservatives an issue of concern to majorities across the political spectrum. Now, progressives in the U.S. face a raft of bills that, among other things, resurrect false charges of Alphabet paedophilia. No wonder LGB groups are jettisoning the T: In the space of just a few years, trans activists have undone the good work that gay activists did over multiple generations.

The progressive movement must stand up to its extremists. We must restore the liberal social compact that won our civil and human rights. That means we should root our claims in areas of common ground, demanding fair treatment, but not the right to dictate what others think.

The most intense theatres of culture-war combat involve the education of children, an area in which liberal attitudes must be allowed to hold sway. Popular free speech principles should be applied to school libraries and curricula — which means opposing campaigns to root out books demonized by both the left and the right alike. In classrooms, an open exploration of history can provide a context for kids to discuss how injustices were overcome in the past and how they might be handled in the present. Students can be taught to brainstorm how to use their advantages to help the less fortunate, and how others in their situation have dealt with adversity. But they should never be taught that personal relationships and moral hierarchies are determined by the colour of one’s skin.

Likewise, boys and girls should be allowed to play and dress free of gender stereotypes, with a no-bullying policy strictly enforced. They should learn who they are by themselves, and be taught that they are more than the sum of their parts. They should not be labelled by ideological adults consumed by a mania for gender theory. In school, I skipped with the girls, had a lisp, and liked to play with china elves. That didn’t make me a girl, just as dressing butch and dreading the effects of a puberty doesn’t turn a lesbian into a boy. (I shudder to think what might have happened were I a child today.)

We should also return to the left’s traditional focus on class. Diversty, equity, and inclusion initiatives enrich the small group of well-educated profiteers who proselytize the DEI faith, but they’re actually worse than useless when it comes to workplaces, exacerbating intolerance among the hapless workers forced to submit to tedious seminars and questionnaires. Resources from the DEI industry’s rapidly metastasizing bureaucracies should be redirected to programs that materially help the poor: Unlike affirmative action programs, investments in deprived neighbourhoods disproportionately assist minorities without the creation of double-standards and racial left-behinds that serve to energize white nationalists. They also support social mobility and economic inclusion.

“I just want to say—you know—can we, can we all get along?” is how Rodney King put it in 1991. While many of us might read the underlying sentiment as self-evident, the militant social-justice left now treats it as a forbidden lie, since the entire movement is based on the conceit that peaceful and harmonious coexistence is impossible within a pluralistic liberal society that doesn’t forcibly “queer” itself, endlessly hector citizens about their bigotry, and segregate workers and students by skin colour.

I believe we can all get along. As a progressive, a gay man, a Canadian, and a liberal, I want no part of any movement — whatever it calls itself — that insists we can’t.

[ Mirror: https://archive.is/es3Q4 ]

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To the extent that liberal principles are actually being rejected, it's coming from both the authoritarian reactionary right, and the authoritarian postmodern left.