#when you accept a term like this as synonymous with ''bad people'' you swallow the lies more easily! you swallow the exaggerations!

[mzminola]

This is not a perfect analogy but I am making it anyway to try to convey what being online has been like for me lately.

Seeing people say "Oh, Jews are fine, I just hate zionists!" is like seeing "Oh, women are fine, I just hate feminists!"

Zionism and feminism are both very broad socio-political movements that have changed focus over time, that ostensibly have some very basic core tenets but you really need to ask the specific person you're talking to how they personally define it to be sure.

Both have been subject to legitimate criticism, and hostile reactionary bullshit. Had waves, sub-movements, splinters, people with damn near opposite views sharing the term and people with seemingly identical views rejecting it.

You can give working, broad definitions like these:

Feminism is the belief that all people should be treated equally regardless of gender, with a focus on women's rights due to systemic oppression.

Zionism is the belief that all peoples have the right to self determination and safety, with a focus on Jewish people finding it in Israel.

You can also give different definitions! Many people give different definitions! Many people also hold these beliefs but use different names for them for various reasons.

There are self-described zionists who are jingoistic, racist, etc, and who attribute those attitudes to their zionism. Just as there are feminists who are misandrist, bio-essentialist, transphobic, homophobic, and so on, who attribute those attitudes to their feminism.

There are also incredibly selfless, compassionate activists working for positive change in the world who consider themselves zionists and feminists.

It has been very jarring to see people, who I respect, uncritically reblogging posts or headlines that use "zionists" as a stand in for "bad people", just as jarring as it would be to see them sharing things that use "feminists" that way. Especially when those posts contain easily debunked conspiracy theories that I know you'd have seen right through if the OP said "Jews" but because they said "zionists" you swallowed it whole.

I am not asking anyone to stop sharing important information, petitions, news articles, resources, and so on. I am asking you to slow down and stop spreading inflammatory language that paints a broad socio-political movement for Jewish self-determination as inherently bad. The same way I would ask you not to spread inflammatory language that paints gender equality & women's liberation as inherently bad.

If the information is important, please look for other, more neutrally worded posts. Or verify the links yourself and make a fresh post! There is no situation online in which the only way to share information must be to spread such language.

[the-voodoo-cat]

I do want to genuinely apologize about the post regarding Caleb and Essek. It was meant as a jest, though I see now that it was in bad taste and I apologize. I’m not trying to hurt people but I clearly did and I really am sorry for that. I’ve deleted the post since because it does not reflect my actual thoughts and feelings on the topic and I want to be very clear that I have no problem (nor would do any thing about it even if I did) with Caleb ending up in a romantic relationship with a woman in canon! I was speaking about a very specific hypothetical in a very exaggerated way that was meant as a joke, but I understand that many people did not see it that way and I apologize that I let my own passion cloud my judgement. I will not make posts like that in the future, and I will do my best to not hurt people again in the ways I have with my past posts. 

I also want to explain where this all came from so  here’s the essay. The whole thing. Hopefully more eloquent than I’ve been on here recently. It was written months ago, so some of the things in it may seem strange in the context of current canon but I don’t feel like completely revising it.

I am putting the essay under a cut to avoid clogging up people’s timelines, but I do encourage people to at least try to read some of it. If there really are biphobic flaws in it, please please tell me genuinely, because that is so far from my intention as a critic and an academic. All I wish to do is point out harmful rhetoric, and in the context of this previous episode explain why I was so upset in the first place. (also if you’re wondering about the pronouns and addressees in the essay it was actually written as a letter to the cast but I couldn’t find an email to send it to)

I want to be clear before I continue that this entire discussion has nothing to do with shipping, but also that while the canonization of ships is irrelevant to representation that does not mean it should be mocked or trivialized either, because the concept of shipping is often an outlet for queer people to explore relationships or romance in ways they do not get in media. In regard to Fjord’s sexuality, my insistence on giving confirmation that he is gay also has nothing to do with shipping, or any form of feeling that he should be in a relationship with any of the other characters. I mention this because it is an argument often weaponized against queer fans, and I do not want it to be seen as any part of my motivation for writing this letter. I have seen many queer fans feel the need to walk away from twitter and the Critter community because of the abuse they suffer for promoting any form of gay or trans speculations, and while I understand that the cast has absolutely no power over this behavior, the least you could do is not participate in this abuse.

As it stands now, the way the cast and Brian discuss Fjord and make jokes regarding him is contradictory, and it is in this contradiction that the homophobic rhetoric I mentioned originates. Fjord is described in Talks as a gay man, through frequent allusions to ‘sword swallowing’ or him being a bottom, yet also described as (or at least hinted at) having romantic intentions toward Jester. This contradiction between showing him as gay and showing him as straight (or bisexual) is not only confusing, but cruel and demeaning to gay men—the discussions of his sexual relationship or interest with men becomes the butt of a joke, something to laugh at or something to mock, while you placate non-queer fans by ensuring us “don’t worry though, he’s straight.” This reinforces an extremely harmful rhetoric that gayness is a joke, or a fetishistic hypersexual phase that can make a character quirky or weird but still eventually normalized to straightness. Not only does this behaviour harm and invalidate gay fans on a personal level, it also encourages straight fans to fetishize or trivialize gayness in the community, and further silence gay voices.

The jokes made on Talks about sword swallowing or bottoming, specifically, belie a particular brand of straight ignorance or apathy that is actually as harmful as outright homophobia—if you don’t specifically say you’re mocking a gay man or gayness, then you aren’t, right? Unfortunately, this argument is inherently flawed because it ignored the significance of microaggressions in systemic oppression and abuse of minorities. When you mock a man for his sexual interest in men or allude to a man having these desires while also claiming that he is romantically interested in a woman, you turn gay sexual desire into joke and improbability. That is to say, when you paint a gay or bisexual man’s interest in men as purely sexual, you trivialize the importance of man loves man (mlm) relationships and invalidate their social qualities by making them seem inherently lesser to male/female relationships. Moreover, you contribute to a systemic fetishization of mlm relationships that turns them into an object for the sexual desire of straight women and dehumanizes the men involved. Thus, by constantly alluding to Fjord’s sexual interest in men while reinforcing his romantic interest in a woman you paint all potential sexual interactions (both in his history and his future) Fjord has with men as fetishistic, trivial, petty, socially nonviable and ultimately meaningless, and in doing so also paint all mlm relationships this same way.

Furthermore, your jokes about Fjord being a bottom were, perhaps unintentionally, a direct reference to Fjord being mlm. Although they are used in colloquial speech rather casually now, the words “top” and “bottom” are not synonymous with “dom” and “sub” but rather specifically refer to gay sexual intercourse. As such, when you say Fjord is a bottom, you are saying he has had or has interest in having sex with another man. The joke about Fjord taking the “Pact of the Bottom” is rather humorous, so long as he is actually a bottom. However, if he is a straight man with no interest in having sex with other men, it instead implies that gay sex is a fetish, something weird or strange and inherently unnatural, and that men who have it are subordinate, lesser, and/or weak. Similarly, if he is bisexual but only engages romantically with women this rhetoric still creates negative connotations and hypersexualization of mlm relationships by making them singularly about sex in a way that is typically used to discuss fetish and kink.

If Fjord is gay, all of these jokes and allusions are not so inappropriate, and so long as he eventually finds, or has in his history, a fulfilling romantic relationship with another man there is nothing wrong with the way he is being discussed. The need for him having a long term mlm relationship stems from the lack of proper mlm relationships in media, and also avoids the trope of the hypersexualized fetishistic object of the gay man that I discussed above. Also, there is an evident gap in Critical Role’s general representation of gay happiness, and although I would never force or even request that representation, I want you all to be aware that you are falling into a trope of tragic and ultimately lonely or unloved gay men both in the depiction of Tarry and of Gilmore. That is not to say that they (particularly Gilmore, whom I adore) are not outstanding characters that are dynamic and interesting, but just that they are the only major gay characters and thus neither of them finding fulfilling romantic love falls into a bit of a trope. As a note, when I say “gay” here, I do mean gay (as in mlm) not queer (as in LGBTQ), which is why I do not include the lesbian relationship between Kima and Allura.

Finally, one last note: sexuality is not a ploy, or a backstory, or a secret. Sexuality, like race, class, and gender, are key and immediate aspects of a character that, on a meta level that can be confirmed and discussed on a show like Talks Machina, should be available to the audience right away. I get that backstory is something all of the players are being cagey about, and I understand why, but I encourage you to not think about a character’s sexuality in this way—the character may not reveal their sexuality to the party but that does not mean the cast should be keeping that information away from the audience.

Finally I do want to apologize once again for some of my own rhetoric, even in this essay I know I refer to Fjord’s interest in Jester (or women generally) as “straight” instead of immediately acknowledging his potential bisexuality. For me, I have seen Bi-ness used as a ploy by writers so many times to make a character quirky, while still putting them in a m/f relationship, that for us queer fans I think it is important to remember that m/f bi relationships are the only ones that straight fans find acceptable the majority of the time and this does really hurt a lot of queer people. 

[pocketminstrel]

The Color of Fear

“When I see guys walking down the street in a suit and tie I’m like phew I bet he can’t wait to go home and a black man again.

It gets tiring to not have that difference known. Acknowledged. And have to keep talking about it. That’s what gets tiring.

People of color are spilling their guts and ‘doing education’ to white people […] and then we get cross-examined and then it’s well 'maybe your problem is blah blah blah. And it’s always that racism gets looked at as a person of color problem, and it’s not. We’re on the receiving end of the problem, but we’re not the problem. I walk in a world where black people, latinos, asians, arabs, all of these different people are experienced as problem people. And that we’ll deal with the person of color problem when in fact racism is essentially a white problem. 

There’s a way in which American, and white, and human become synonyms. That why can’t we just treat each other as human being, when I hear that from a white person, it means 'why can’t we all just pretend to be white people. I’ll pretend you’re a white person, and then you can pretend to be white. Why don’t you eat what I eat, why don’t you drink what I drink, why don’t you think like I think, why don’t you feel like I feel. I’m so goddamn sick and tired about hearing about that. I’m sick of that. […] 'Why don’t you come the hell over here.’ That’s what I hear every goddamn day. And you know that I can’t come over there. You know that this skin and this hair and this way that I talk and think and that I feel will never ever get included because I’m unpalatable to this goddamn nation. I’m unpalatable. You cannot swallow me. You cannot taste me. Because you don’t want to. […] You think that 'hey it’ll all be fine when we treat each other like human beings’ snd what that says to me is 'don’t be yourself. be like me. Keep me comfortable. connect when i’m ready to connect. Come out to my place. Or maybe I’ll come down and get some artifacts from your place. Uh-uh. That is bullshit.

There is no American ethnicity. You have to throw away your ethnicity to become American. 

As a white man, he doesn’t have to think about his position in life, his place in the world, the history books tell him as they’re written that this world is his. HE doesn’t have to think about where he goes, what he does. He doesn’t have to think like a white person. The way the world has been set up, white IS human. So he doesn’t have to worry 'how do I think like a white person.’ I’d assume that doesn’t have to enter a white person’s mind.

Most of the lethal, toxic, deadly racism that African-American people experience and that other POC experience in this country – it does not come from [neo-nazis.] It comes from moral, fair-minded, people who believe they are lovers of justice, church-goers, people who experience themselves as decent and actually very nice folk. And it is there that I find my fear. I think what it means to be white in part is that you have the privilege of blaming people of color for their own victimization under white supremacy. I’ve heard you say that to me, I’ve heard you say that to him, I’ve heard you say that to him… every person of color in the room who challenged your perception of yourself in the world. That is part of what it means to be white. When Victor is telling you about being asleep, not being conscious of your privilege and taking it for granted, it was revealed to me that that is true when you refer to us as 'you coloreds.’ Because I find that to be a demeaning term. I find it alienating. And I’ve heard it in the context of referring to people of color in a negative context. And that’s painful for me to hear it. Not as 'you’ anything. Not at 'you’ people, not as 'you coloreds’ not 'you asians’ not 'you blacks’ not 'you latinos.’ […] nonwhites, I’m more comfortable with that. When you say 'you’ it’s alienating. 'You’ bastards, 'you’ pigs, 'you’ lowlives. 'you’ no good people. 'you’ people of color.

I do agree that you have to look at inter-ethnic racism within the context of white supremacy but I disagree with the fact that you can’t cover that up. Because it is there and we have to deal with it before we can do anything about white racism. We have to deal with that conflict, because it’s there and in my opinion it’s growing. By exploring inter-ethnic racism, we’ve torn apart the unity that we’ve built up earlier by attacking white racism.  I was wanting to think that I was white. I wanted to blend in to this extreme degree until I realized who I really want to be and I looked back. My family’s internment in the concentration camps had a huge impact on them. They didn’t want to identify with being Japanese. Because when they said they were Japanese, they were discriminated against severely and locked up. They didn’t want to identify as being buddhist anymore. So my grandfather became Christian to blend in. Just now I’m starting to reclaim that. What we do to each other pushes us down, and lifts you up. And what you do to us, or what white folks do to us pushes us down and pushes you up. It’s not the same.

I just also hope you keep in mind that there is no quick fix. You don’t change and become a non-racist overnight. You I think have just tapped into what racism is all about. Just kind of touched the surface of it. I think there’s a lot ahead of you. You’re developing a new consciousness. You’re just starting to see how we as people of color feel. You’re getting to find out about our reality. And its gonna be a long process to really really understand it. Stretch out your arms and take hold of the cloth that covers you with both hands. The cure for the pain is in the pain. Good and bad are mixed. If you do not have both, you don’t belong with us.

Over this weekend it was really important for me to see people express their anger towards racism because it is something that is very hard for me to do. I was raised acculturated to not express that kind of anger when I was mistreated. And to take it, silently. And I have always to express it because when I keep it inside, it’s killing me. As I believe it has killed my father.  Hearing something and being the nice Japanese man and sort of bowing my head and not wanting to create any waves or not wanting to disturb people or not wanting to offend people. And as I get older, I’m no longer willing to do that anymore. It’s just not acceptable.

I think I will see change in individuals, I saw that here that there was change for them. I don’t think I will see change on a societal level, on an institutional level, in my lifetime. And that makes me very sad to think that. What I can hold onto are the individuals who I know are changing. I know that David will go away and educate his daughters, I know he’ll do that. That’s what I have to hold on to. He’ll fight and he’ll struggle and he’ll intervene on my behalf. And I think that it’ll wear off. That his ability to struggle against racism will wear off. Unless he has other white men with him, unless he has other white men with him who are saying 'keep going.’ If David or people like David are going to depend on people of color to keep him going against racism, racism won’t change.”

[stopkingobama]

Inside the Soros-backed "Alt Left" terrorist movement

Click here to deport George Soros! —

Image credit: World Economic Forum Photo by Sebastian DerungsCC by SA 2.0

When writing this piece, a quote kept rattling around in the back of my head. It was the title of the opening chapter of “The Feminine Mystique,” Betty Friedan’s seminal 1963 feminist manifesto: The Problem That Has No Name. Apologies in advance, for appropriating and altering three of the quotes I find most meaningful from that chapter, for my own purposes here:

The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American liberals…

Even so, most liberals still did not know that this problem was real. But those who had faced it honestly knew that all the media dismissals, the academic justifications, the intellectualized double speak and the manufactured outrage were somehow drowning the problem in unreality…

How can any person see the whole truth within the bounds of one’s own life? How can she believe that voice inside herself, when it denies the conventional, accepted truths by which she has been living? And yet the liberals I have talked to, who are finally listening to that inner voice, seem in some incredible way to be groping through to a truth that has defied the media.”

The Alt-Left Is Real

There is an effort underfoot, in the media and in academia, to declare the Alt-Left a myth, to sweep it back under the rug, to reduce it, in effect, back to being a sickness not spoken of, a problem that has no name. I have had well-meaning friends tell me I should not use the term Alt-Left (or any of its synonyms: Regressive Left, CTRL-Left, SJWism) because they are ‘pejoratives’ used only by the right to attack the left.

In my experience, this is not true. Like canaries in the coal mine, liberals who do not (or no longer) subscribe to the Alt-Left ideology have been sounding the alarm about this creeping plague of repressive groupthink for quite a while now. I believe this attempt to dissuade our use of the term Alt-Left is purposeful (even if not consciously recognized by individuals who are doing it) — for how can we discuss something we cannot refer to by name?

When asked to define Alt-Left, I would describe it as a leftist but illiberal authoritarian ideology rooted in postmodernism and neo-Marxism that supports censorship, condones violence in response to speech, is obsessed with identity politics (much like the Alt-Right), and functions like a secular religion that gives its believers a sense of moral self-worth.

It masquerades as a form of liberalism, but it has more in common with authoritarianism than its true believers can (or want to?) admit. It claims to speak for the marginalized, but it either ignores or attempts to hatefully shame members of marginalized groups who do not subscribe to the ideology.

It is not simply Antifa; it is the ideology that undergirds Antifa, and it has swallowed much of BLM and intersectional third wave feminism. It wishes to swallow the whole of the left, the country, the world. It is rooted in nihilism, resentfulness, and arrogance, though it presents itself as being rooted in equality, justice, and morality. It favors collectivism over individualism, statism over liberty, forced equality of outcome over freedom.

Now…imagine if I had to say that mouthful every time I wished to talk about the Alt-Left because I bought into the notion that to give it a name it would be insulting to fellow liberals. No, to speak of it by name is to out it for what it is and to reduce some of its power.

What’s in a Name?

I can’t tell you how good it felt when I first discovered the work of Dave Rubin, a reasonable liberal, and realized I wasn’t alone in seeing this pernicious belief system for what it really is.

In his video, Rubin offers that it doesn’t matter which term we use, what’s important is that we are allowed to identify the problem. “Whatever name you use for this well-meaning yet painfully misguided set of ideas is largely irrelevant. We needed this phrase to identify this backward ideology which puts groups before people. And sometimes you need a label to get people to understand an idea.”

Reasonable liberal Maajid Nawaz, widely credited with coining the term Regressive Left, also made the following observation last year:

Today’s active, organized left is no longer liberal. A liberal will always prioritize free speech over offense. This behavior, censorship on the organized left, post factual behavior, violence being seen as an option and prioritizing group identity over individual rights. That isn’t liberal.”

Do yourself a favor and watch the whole video:

Yet another reasonable liberal, Tim Pool, points out that one of the few things Politico gets right about the Alt-Left is that it is a term used by centrist liberals. Pool says, “Yes, I use the term Alt-Left because I want to make sure everybody knows when I say I’m left-leaning, I’m not the kind of person that’s gonna go out and punch somebody in the face or take away their rights because I think mine are more important.”

I’m also a liberal who’s been using the term Alt-Left since I first learned to trust that voice within myself, that voice that denies the conventional, accepted Alt-Left “truths” by which I had been living.

The first time I used it in a public piece of writing was back in May while attempting to articulate my transformation in belief systems in an essay called On Leaving the SJW Cult and Finding Myself. The essay itself was a long time coming. I started to wake up to the creeping authoritarianism and endless internal hypocrisies of the accepted Alt-Left ideology over a year ago. But leaving behind a belief system to which you’ve subscribed for twenty years is a bit like razing your house to the ground and rebuilding from the ground up.

Suddenly you are starting with nothing; everything you thought you knew is suspect. It takes a long time to evaluate each previously held belief and try to discern which ones hold substance. Where before my house had foolishly been built on the shifting sands of postmodernism, this time I want to ensure that, as Dr. Jordan Peterson might say, my house is built on rock.

It makes me think of George Lakoff’s “Don’t Think of an Elephant,” my first introduction to the concept of framing. Lackoff said “Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world….Neuroscience tells us that each of the concepts we have — the long-term concepts that structure how we think — is instantiated in the synapses of our brains…If a strongly held frame doesn’t fit the facts, the facts will be ignored and the frame will be kept.”

I devoured this book when a young SJW. It helped me understand how people could vote Republican and why my right-wing Aunt didn’t seem to be swayed to my point of view no matter how many facts I threw at her. What I didn’t think too much about was how this human tendency is just as prevalent on the left as it is on the right.

The Frog and the Pot

I am of the opinion that a lot of well-meaning people have become converts to the Alt-Left ideology without even realizing it. Like the parable of the slow boiling frog, if you had told me at the beginning that one day I’d be expected to perform mental gymnastics in order to defend censorship and violence in response to speech, I would have leaped from the pot.

Instead, I was conditioned to accept as gospel each new tenet of SJWism over a period of twenty years. I believed in the essential goodness of the ideology, and in my own essential goodness in preaching it. When facts about the direction it was taking me made themselves known to me, I rejected them because they did not fit the frame. As the ideology became more noticeably toxic, hypocritical, and authoritarian, so too did the tactics of the true believers. Whether in academia, in the media, at Google, or online — the message is clear: dare to step out of line or express an independent thought, and a mob of zealous SJW zombies will come for you. The fear of losing one’s job, status, friends or personal safety is a strong motivator in forcing reasonable people to remain silent.

I have received a lot of positive feedback about the sentiments expressed in my writing about SJWism from people all over the political spectrum. Most meaningful to me of these might be the messages I get from fellow liberals who are going through the same realization, confusion, and fear.

In addition to the public responses you can read yourself, I have received private messages from people in academia, journalism, and entertainment — many of them liberals — expressing that the piece resonated with them and that they were afraid to share it (or presumably in some cases, to express themselves about anything at all). Excerpts from a handful of these are below:

I honestly was scared to tweet that…that’s how bad things have gotten. I’ve nearly lost work…The world has gone mad.”

“I have definitely taken notice of so many of my friends on the left going to a dark place.”

“It is totally wild. These people are my friends — my community….They’re so angry.”

“…your piece on the social justice cult affected me more than words can say. After being called ‘violent’…because I used a word that someone decided was offensive…I had a bit of an existential crisis about my life and self-worth. Thus, I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit… I remain committed to the idea that privilege exists and it should be combated through both self-reflection and system action. I also am a proud liberal, and that hasn’t lessened. That said, I can’t get behind the individual scapegoating, shouting and intimidation in the name of fighting hate, or defining sharing a point of view as “educating” and “labor.” Ultimately, the world needs more compassion….I’m trying to get there on talking and writing about some of this a little more publicly, but I don’t think I’m quite there yet (also, the fact that I’m on the academic job market makes me a bit hesitant).” 

“I saw your posts and they were refreshing. I hate politics but free speech is so important to me….but then I remember I work in TV and Music and I can’t say anything that’s going to make me lose my job. It’s crazy what’s going on right now.”

“Just wanted to let you know I’m one of those people who greatly appreciates your voice on social media, but am too afraid of the thought police to voice my support.”

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

If the Alt-Left doesn’t exist, why are so many liberals and centrists afraid of expressing themselves? Why are so many people self-censoring for their own sense of safety? I was fascinated by the James Damore story, not because I have an opinion on the legality of his dismissal, but because his online stoning and subsequent firing confirmed for me what I already suspected: Google, like most of the tech space, the entertainment space, the academic space and the media space has become a panopticon of Alt-Left groupthink, self-censorship, and fear.

I know this fear intimately. As I started waking up to the illiberal nature of the growing Alt-Left ideology, I held my tongue for a long time out of fear of losing job opportunities, the safety of anonymity, and friends. After all, I built my career, and by proxy a lot of my friendships, from this SJW frame. I don’t judge anyone for subscribing to this ideology out of misplaced idealism and a desire to do good; I did for twenty years. Likewise, I don’t judge anyone who is currently waking up from it but is constrained by fear. As I tell folks who write me about it: I don’t know the exact way to get over it. I suspect it’s different for every person. But trust me when I tell you, it is so liberating on the other side.

For those self-identified liberals who may have been seduced by this belief system, by its propaganda, and are fuming at this piece, thank you for reading this far. I believe a part of you is struggling to wake up if you stuck it out this long. I encourage you to start listening to that small voice inside yourself, the one that tells you when something doesn’t seem quite right or reasonable, no matter if it’s accepted by all of your peers.

Take a look at who was really at the Free Speech Rally in Boston for starters. This, for example, is Shiva Ayyadurai. You may decide you don’t like him because he’s conservative, but to call him a “white supremacist” is a dangerous Alt-Left falsehood.

Take the time to listen to Will Johnson and Joey Gibson, two of the organizers of the Patriot Prayer Rally in SF this past weekend. Their rally was canceled after successful media (and political) attempts to smear them as “white supremacists” caused subsequent threats of violence from the Alt-Left. Ask yourself if it’s not odd that so many so-called liberals are now smearing people of color with whom they don’t agree as “white supremacists” (Charles Barkley is apparently one now too, so Johnson, Gibson, and Ayyadurai are not alone).

Then ask yourself if these people, or these people, or these people, or these people, or these people, or these people, or these people, or these people or these people, or these people, or these people, or these people, or these students, or these students, or these students, or these students are really fighting fascism, or if they are acting as footsoldiers (some witting, some unwitting) for a pro-censorship and pro-violence ideology. These facts may not fit your frame, but — do the actions depicted here reflect your liberal values?

I read a C.S. Lewis quote some time ago, that has stuck with me during my transformation in thought. Perhaps it will stick with you:

“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything — God and our friends and ourselves included — as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.”

Keri Smith

Keri is Co-Founder of Whitesmith Entertainment.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

[americanlibertypac]

Inside the Soros-backed "Alt Left" terrorist movement

Click here to deport George Soros! —

Image credit: World Economic Forum Photo by Sebastian DerungsCC by SA 2.0

When writing this piece, a quote kept rattling around in the back of my head. It was the title of the opening chapter of “The Feminine Mystique,” Betty Friedan’s seminal 1963 feminist manifesto: The Problem That Has No Name. Apologies in advance, for appropriating and altering three of the quotes I find most meaningful from that chapter, for my own purposes here:

The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American liberals…

Even so, most liberals still did not know that this problem was real. But those who had faced it honestly knew that all the media dismissals, the academic justifications, the intellectualized double speak and the manufactured outrage were somehow drowning the problem in unreality…

How can any person see the whole truth within the bounds of one’s own life? How can she believe that voice inside herself, when it denies the conventional, accepted truths by which she has been living? And yet the liberals I have talked to, who are finally listening to that inner voice, seem in some incredible way to be groping through to a truth that has defied the media.”

The Alt-Left Is Real

There is an effort underfoot, in the media and in academia, to declare the Alt-Left a myth, to sweep it back under the rug, to reduce it, in effect, back to being a sickness not spoken of, a problem that has no name. I have had well-meaning friends tell me I should not use the term Alt-Left (or any of its synonyms: Regressive Left, CTRL-Left, SJWism) because they are ‘pejoratives’ used only by the right to attack the left.

In my experience, this is not true. Like canaries in the coal mine, liberals who do not (or no longer) subscribe to the Alt-Left ideology have been sounding the alarm about this creeping plague of repressive groupthink for quite a while now. I believe this attempt to dissuade our use of the term Alt-Left is purposeful (even if not consciously recognized by individuals who are doing it) — for how can we discuss something we cannot refer to by name?

When asked to define Alt-Left, I would describe it as a leftist but illiberal authoritarian ideology rooted in postmodernism and neo-Marxism that supports censorship, condones violence in response to speech, is obsessed with identity politics (much like the Alt-Right), and functions like a secular religion that gives its believers a sense of moral self-worth.

It masquerades as a form of liberalism, but it has more in common with authoritarianism than its true believers can (or want to?) admit. It claims to speak for the marginalized, but it either ignores or attempts to hatefully shame members of marginalized groups who do not subscribe to the ideology.

It is not simply Antifa; it is the ideology that undergirds Antifa, and it has swallowed much of BLM and intersectional third wave feminism. It wishes to swallow the whole of the left, the country, the world. It is rooted in nihilism, resentfulness, and arrogance, though it presents itself as being rooted in equality, justice, and morality. It favors collectivism over individualism, statism over liberty, forced equality of outcome over freedom.

Now…imagine if I had to say that mouthful every time I wished to talk about the Alt-Left because I bought into the notion that to give it a name it would be insulting to fellow liberals. No, to speak of it by name is to out it for what it is and to reduce some of its power.

What’s in a Name?

I can’t tell you how good it felt when I first discovered the work of Dave Rubin, a reasonable liberal, and realized I wasn’t alone in seeing this pernicious belief system for what it really is.

In his video, Rubin offers that it doesn’t matter which term we use, what’s important is that we are allowed to identify the problem. “Whatever name you use for this well-meaning yet painfully misguided set of ideas is largely irrelevant. We needed this phrase to identify this backward ideology which puts groups before people. And sometimes you need a label to get people to understand an idea.”

Reasonable liberal Maajid Nawaz, widely credited with coining the term Regressive Left, also made the following observation last year:

Today’s active, organized left is no longer liberal. A liberal will always prioritize free speech over offense. This behavior, censorship on the organized left, post factual behavior, violence being seen as an option and prioritizing group identity over individual rights. That isn’t liberal.”

Do yourself a favor and watch the whole video:

Yet another reasonable liberal, Tim Pool, points out that one of the few things Politico gets right about the Alt-Left is that it is a term used by centrist liberals. Pool says, “Yes, I use the term Alt-Left because I want to make sure everybody knows when I say I’m left-leaning, I’m not the kind of person that’s gonna go out and punch somebody in the face or take away their rights because I think mine are more important.”

I’m also a liberal who’s been using the term Alt-Left since I first learned to trust that voice within myself, that voice that denies the conventional, accepted Alt-Left “truths” by which I had been living.

The first time I used it in a public piece of writing was back in May while attempting to articulate my transformation in belief systems in an essay called On Leaving the SJW Cult and Finding Myself. The essay itself was a long time coming. I started to wake up to the creeping authoritarianism and endless internal hypocrisies of the accepted Alt-Left ideology over a year ago. But leaving behind a belief system to which you’ve subscribed for twenty years is a bit like razing your house to the ground and rebuilding from the ground up.

Suddenly you are starting with nothing; everything you thought you knew is suspect. It takes a long time to evaluate each previously held belief and try to discern which ones hold substance. Where before my house had foolishly been built on the shifting sands of postmodernism, this time I want to ensure that, as Dr. Jordan Peterson might say, my house is built on rock.

It makes me think of George Lakoff’s “Don’t Think of an Elephant,” my first introduction to the concept of framing. Lackoff said “Frames are mental structures that shape the way we see the world….Neuroscience tells us that each of the concepts we have — the long-term concepts that structure how we think — is instantiated in the synapses of our brains…If a strongly held frame doesn’t fit the facts, the facts will be ignored and the frame will be kept.”

I devoured this book when a young SJW. It helped me understand how people could vote Republican and why my right-wing Aunt didn’t seem to be swayed to my point of view no matter how many facts I threw at her. What I didn’t think too much about was how this human tendency is just as prevalent on the left as it is on the right.

The Frog and the Pot

I am of the opinion that a lot of well-meaning people have become converts to the Alt-Left ideology without even realizing it. Like the parable of the slow boiling frog, if you had told me at the beginning that one day I’d be expected to perform mental gymnastics in order to defend censorship and violence in response to speech, I would have leaped from the pot.

Instead, I was conditioned to accept as gospel each new tenet of SJWism over a period of twenty years. I believed in the essential goodness of the ideology, and in my own essential goodness in preaching it. When facts about the direction it was taking me made themselves known to me, I rejected them because they did not fit the frame. As the ideology became more noticeably toxic, hypocritical, and authoritarian, so too did the tactics of the true believers. Whether in academia, in the media, at Google, or online — the message is clear: dare to step out of line or express an independent thought, and a mob of zealous SJW zombies will come for you. The fear of losing one’s job, status, friends or personal safety is a strong motivator in forcing reasonable people to remain silent.

I have received a lot of positive feedback about the sentiments expressed in my writing about SJWism from people all over the political spectrum. Most meaningful to me of these might be the messages I get from fellow liberals who are going through the same realization, confusion, and fear.

In addition to the public responses you can read yourself, I have received private messages from people in academia, journalism, and entertainment — many of them liberals — expressing that the piece resonated with them and that they were afraid to share it (or presumably in some cases, to express themselves about anything at all). Excerpts from a handful of these are below:

I honestly was scared to tweet that…that’s how bad things have gotten. I’ve nearly lost work…The world has gone mad.”

“I have definitely taken notice of so many of my friends on the left going to a dark place.”

“It is totally wild. These people are my friends — my community….They’re so angry.”

“…your piece on the social justice cult affected me more than words can say. After being called ‘violent’…because I used a word that someone decided was offensive…I had a bit of an existential crisis about my life and self-worth. Thus, I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit… I remain committed to the idea that privilege exists and it should be combated through both self-reflection and system action. I also am a proud liberal, and that hasn’t lessened. That said, I can’t get behind the individual scapegoating, shouting and intimidation in the name of fighting hate, or defining sharing a point of view as “educating” and “labor.” Ultimately, the world needs more compassion….I’m trying to get there on talking and writing about some of this a little more publicly, but I don’t think I’m quite there yet (also, the fact that I’m on the academic job market makes me a bit hesitant).” 

“I saw your posts and they were refreshing. I hate politics but free speech is so important to me….but then I remember I work in TV and Music and I can’t say anything that’s going to make me lose my job. It’s crazy what’s going on right now.”

“Just wanted to let you know I’m one of those people who greatly appreciates your voice on social media, but am too afraid of the thought police to voice my support.”

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

If the Alt-Left doesn’t exist, why are so many liberals and centrists afraid of expressing themselves? Why are so many people self-censoring for their own sense of safety? I was fascinated by the James Damore story, not because I have an opinion on the legality of his dismissal, but because his online stoning and subsequent firing confirmed for me what I already suspected: Google, like most of the tech space, the entertainment space, the academic space and the media space has become a panopticon of Alt-Left groupthink, self-censorship, and fear.

I know this fear intimately. As I started waking up to the illiberal nature of the growing Alt-Left ideology, I held my tongue for a long time out of fear of losing job opportunities, the safety of anonymity, and friends. After all, I built my career, and by proxy a lot of my friendships, from this SJW frame. I don’t judge anyone for subscribing to this ideology out of misplaced idealism and a desire to do good; I did for twenty years. Likewise, I don’t judge anyone who is currently waking up from it but is constrained by fear. As I tell folks who write me about it: I don’t know the exact way to get over it. I suspect it’s different for every person. But trust me when I tell you, it is so liberating on the other side.

For those self-identified liberals who may have been seduced by this belief system, by its propaganda, and are fuming at this piece, thank you for reading this far. I believe a part of you is struggling to wake up if you stuck it out this long. I encourage you to start listening to that small voice inside yourself, the one that tells you when something doesn’t seem quite right or reasonable, no matter if it’s accepted by all of your peers.

Take a look at who was really at the Free Speech Rally in Boston for starters. This, for example, is Shiva Ayyadurai. You may decide you don’t like him because he’s conservative, but to call him a “white supremacist” is a dangerous Alt-Left falsehood.

Take the time to listen to Will Johnson and Joey Gibson, two of the organizers of the Patriot Prayer Rally in SF this past weekend. Their rally was canceled after successful media (and political) attempts to smear them as “white supremacists” caused subsequent threats of violence from the Alt-Left. Ask yourself if it’s not odd that so many so-called liberals are now smearing people of color with whom they don’t agree as “white supremacists” (Charles Barkley is apparently one now too, so Johnson, Gibson, and Ayyadurai are not alone).

Then ask yourself if these people, or these people, or these people, or these people, or these people, or these people, or these people, or these people or these people, or these people, or these people, or these people, or these students, or these students, or these students, or these students are really fighting fascism, or if they are acting as footsoldiers (some witting, some unwitting) for a pro-censorship and pro-violence ideology. These facts may not fit your frame, but — do the actions depicted here reflect your liberal values?

I read a C.S. Lewis quote some time ago, that has stuck with me during my transformation in thought. Perhaps it will stick with you:

“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything — God and our friends and ourselves included — as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.”

Keri Smith

Keri is Co-Founder of Whitesmith Entertainment.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

[beccarobs]

What about the Wolves?!

There is constantly so much chaos going on in the world and often times, we all tend to overlook the important things. For example, what about the wolves? Now, I’m sure most of you are familiar with the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park, and the positive impact it had on the ecosystem. However, this isn’t about that. This is about the wolves that go unnoticed. The following is a list of Wolves ranked in order. 

1. Governor Tom Wolf

Tom Wolf is the 47th Governor of Pennsylvania. Governor Wolf has been focused on three simple goals: jobs that pay, schools that teach, and government that works. Over the past two years Governor Wolf has fought to increase funding for Pennsylvania schools by nearly $840 million while implementing a fair funding formula, in order to begin reversing the devastating $1 billion in cuts made to schools five years ago. He has expanded health care access to 715,000 Pennsylvanians, including increasing the number of insured children by 20%. Wolf is “for the children” like The Wu Tang Clan. Working diligently to fight the disastrous opioid epidemic, he is still chill a chill dude, so he legalized marijuana. 

2. The Hungry Wolf (from the popular Duran Duran Song, “Hungry Like The Wolf”)

This hit jam was released in 1982 and has been turning people on ever since (according to the redundant YouTube commentary). It won’t get the party started, but it sure will keep it going. It addresses the honest animalistic nature of dating and sexuality. I’m sure this song also reminds you of your mom. Plus, it has been featured in popular movies, such as “Big Fat Liar” starring Paul Giamatti and who can argue with that. 

3. A Lone Wolf

According to the widely trusted source, Wikipedia, “A lone wolf is a person that generally lives or spends time alone instead of with a group.” This term originates from observing real wolf behaviors, thus creating the euphemistic metaphor that wolf behavior and human behavior are synonymous to one another (despite zero biological evidence for this [I am not a licensed scientist.]). “Normally a pack animal, wolves that have left or been excluded from their pack are described as lone wolves.” Lone wolves (the people, not the actual wolves) hold their niche is society, as people are often exclusive. People who can be independent and kick ass despite being beaten down or left out are kickass people. However, everyone loves being accepted, and where there are lone wolves, there are other lone wolves, and hopefully they can collaborate into a cohesive wolf pack, like in the movie “The Hangover”. 

4. Endangered Wolves

These guys are obviously overlooked. Being endangered isn’t chill, but I’m sure these sad, dying, little wolves are. I guess I don’t know how chill wolves are firsthand, and due to the headlines about them attacking children, we can assume that seems pretty chill to some people. #SaveTheWolves

5. Wolf of Wall Street

Although the man who inspired this nickname (Jordan Belfort) is a criminal, it was a pretty phenomenal feature length film directed by Martin Scorcese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio. Leo was accompanied by a stacked cast in the undertaking of pretending to do hard drugs and insider trading for the entire 3 hours of the movie. Fun fact: The word “fuck” and its numerous conjugations are said between 506 and 569 times, making this the film with the most uses of the word in a mainstream, non-documentary film. Plus, I wrote a paper about this movie without even seeing it and got an A+. The only teacher commentary was, “Have you finished the movie?” (Because I hadn’t, and didn’t talk about the consequences he incurred. Oh well.) While maintaining a 77% approval rating, it’s apparent that this should clearly be ranked.

7. Werewolf 

Werewolves are like the Transformers of mythical creatures. This is a public service announcement on all of the ways you can become a werewolf, according to the world’s most trusted source, Wikipedia:

The removal of clothing and putting on a belt made of wolfskin.

The body is rubbed with a magic salve. 

Drinking rainwater out of the footprint of the animal in question or from certain enchanted streams.

By draining a cup of specially prepared beer and repeating a set formula.

On a certain Wednesday or Friday, slept outside on a summer night with the full moon shining directly on his or her face.

Here’s ways I think you can transform into a werewolf:

Applying Rogaine frequently and excessively, covering one’s entire body while also ingesting a lot of various amphetamines.

Having a boner lasting longer than 4 hours, with no access to a doctor.

Having hairy and angry Eastern Eurourpean ancestors accompanied by a drinking problem that causes you to wear clothes that are too tight.

Dress up for Halloween. 

Witches and curses and stuff, duh.

6. Wolf Blitzer

Reportedly one of the least buzzworthy news anchors on air today, Wolf Blitzer is just trying to do his best. I really appreciate whomever cuts his hair, and I appreciated his befuddlement when Trump “won” the election, despite the backlash he received on Twitter. Also rumor has it that he’s a Ween fan, so points to him for listening to that. But milk toast can no longer be praised in our country, we deserve better than boring. Sorry Mr. Blitzer, I still like your haircut.

8. Teen Wolf

All teenagers are nightmares. That’s a fact. And I don’t know much about this popular Teen Wolf, except that instead of puberty hitting him, he is faced with folkloric nonsense and excessive chest hair growth. I’m not sure if he’s violent, or good at sports. But he is a teenager, and that is bad enough. 

9. Big Bad Wolf

His name defines his character, which is cool because it is kind of like a heads up for his unpredictable shitty behavior. First of all, these three pig brothers (we can assume this because they are doing serious construction work, a stereotypically male profession) built these houses on their own, with their bare hoofs. I can’t imagine building anything without thumbs could be very successful, and I’m now revealing a plot hole that I think has gone unnoticed. Maybe the fact that they were pigs negatively impacted the structural stability of these homes, leaving them more vulnerable to strong wolf winds. Regardless, it was not the pigs’ fault. He huffed, and puffed, and blew those homes over, without any appreciation for the diversity of architecture or material. Also, what is the point of that fable? If I remember it correctly, which I probably am not, the moral is just that you should build your home with brick and not hire pigs as your architects or carpenters.

10. Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood

Although great at deception, and having the ability to talk to humans, we cannot forget that he swallowed an entire grandma. He also followed a little girl through the woods and stole her baked goods. The most probable wolf to encounter, and thus the worst. 

Spread awareness about the wolves. Tell your friends. Tell your coworkers you don't like. I know you'll tell your mom. #wolves