Tag: political correctness

RIGHT ON CUE: Any And All Criticism of Zohran Mamdani is Suddenly Islamophobic

Democrats and the media have discovered a new strategy to protect the communist Muslim Zohran Mamdani from criticism. Just kidding, it’s actually an old strategy.

From now on, criticism of Mamdani automatically makes you an Islamophobe.

Where have we seen this strategy used before? Oh yeah! During the eight years of the Obama presidency. As you may recall, all criticism of Obama made you automatically racist.

Same old tired playbook.

From Axios:

MAGA erupts with Islamophobic attacks on Zohran Mamdani

MAGA influencers exploded over Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, launching a wave of racist and Islamophobic attacks against the 33-year-old democratic socialist.

Why it matters: Mamdani who would be New York’s first Muslim mayor if elected, is of Indian ancestry, was born in Uganda and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2018. He’s quickly becoming a MAGA boogeyman as much for his faith and background as for his left-wing politics.

– Police were already investigating hate-related threats against Mamdani in the days leading up to Tuesday’s election, where he was on track to defeat former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

– Mamdani, whose has drawn criticism for his pro-Palestinian activism, has repeatedly condemned antisemitism and pledged to be a mayor for all New Yorkers.

What they’re saying: “It’s sad in that in one sense it’s unsurprising, and in another, it is still deeply disappointing to see what politics has become in this moment,” Mamdani told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki in an interview Wednesday.

It’s all so predictable.

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Insanity: ESPN Announcer Apologizes for Calling America ‘Great’ During WNBA Broadcast

Calling America “great” is apparently a flagrant foul in the WNBA.

ESPN basketball analyst Rebecca Lobo was essentially forced to eat her words after an off-the-cuff comment led to some awkward seconds of silence during a game between the Indiana Fever and the Las Vegas Aces on Sunday.

Not only did she backtrack on calling her own country “great,” she actually apologized afterward. And the public backlash has been scathing.

As Fox News reported, the embarrassing incident occurred when Lobo took issue with a foul call issued by officials in the closing minute of the contest.

You have to see it to believe it.

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The Coward’s Bargain: How We Taught A Generation To Live In Fear

Everyone’s Afraid to Speak

Someone our family has known forever recently told my sister that they’ve been reading my Substack and that if they wrote the things I write, people would call them crazy. I got a kick out of that—not because it’s untrue, but because it reveals something darker about where we’ve ended up as a society. Most people are terrified of being themselves in public.

My sister’s response made me laugh: “People do call him crazy. He simply doesn’t care.” The funniest part is that I don’t even write the craziest stuff I research—just the stuff I can back up with sources and/or my own personal observations. I always try to stay rooted in logic, reason and facts though—I’m clear when I’m speculating and when I’m not.

This same guy has sent me dozens of private messages over the last 4 or 5 years challenging me on stuff I share online. I’ll respond with source material or common sense, and then—crickets. He disappears. If I say something he doesn’t want to hear, he vanishes like a child covering his ears. Over the last few years, I’ve been proven right about most of what we’ve argued about, and he’s been wrong. But it doesn’t matter—he’s got the memory of a gnat and the pattern never changes.

But he’d never make that challenge publicly, never risk being seen engaging with my arguments where others might witness the conversation. This kind of private curiosity paired with public silence is everywhere—people will engage with dangerous ideas in private but never risk being associated with them publicly. It’s part of that reflexive “that can’t be true” mindset that shuts down inquiry before it can even begin.

But he’s not alone. We’ve created a culture where wrongthink is policed so aggressively that even successful, powerful people whisper their doubts like they’re confessing crimes.

I was on a hike last year with a very prominent tech VC. He was telling me about his son’s football team—how their practices kept getting disrupted because their usual field on Randall’s Island was now being used to house migrants. He leaned in, almost whispering: “You know, I’m a liberal, but maybe the people complaining about immigration have a point.” Here’s a guy who invests mountains of money into companies that shape the world we live in, and he’s afraid to voice a mild concern about policy in broad daylight. Afraid of his own thoughts.

After I spoke out against vaccine mandates, a coworker told me he totally agreed with my position—but he was angry that I’d said it. When the company didn’t want to take a stand, I told them I would speak as an individual—on my own time, as a private citizen. He was pissed anyway. In fact, he was scolding me about the repercussions to the company. What’s maddening is that this same person had enthusiastically supported the business taking public stands on other, more politically fashionable causes over the years. Apparently, using your corporate voice was noble when it was fashionable. Speaking as a private citizen became dangerous when it wasn’t.

Another person told me they agreed with me but wished they were “more successful like me” so they could afford to speak out. They had “too much to lose.” The preposterousness of this is staggering. Everyone who spoke out during COVID sacrificed—financially, reputationally, socially. I sacrificed plenty myself.

But I’m no victim. Far from it. Since I was a young man, I’ve never measured achievement by finance or status—my benchmark for being a so-called successful person was owning my own time. Ironically, getting myself canceled was actually a springboard to that. For the first time in my life, I felt I’d achieved time ownership. Whatever I’ve achieved came from being raised by loving parents, working hard, and having the spine to follow convictions rationally. Those attributes, coupled with some great fortune, are the reason for whatever success I’ve had—they’re not the reason I can speak now. Maybe this person should do some inward searching about why they’re not more established. Maybe it’s not about status at all. Maybe it’s about integrity.

This is the adult world we’ve built—one where courage is so rare that people mistake it for privilege, where speaking your mind is seen as a luxury only the privileged can afford, rather than a fundamental requirement for actually becoming established.

And this is the world we’re handing to our children.

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Belgian Nationalist Given 12 Month Suspended Sentence Because Someone Else Shared a ‘Racist’ Meme

Belgian conservative-nationalist Dries Van Langenhove has again been sentenced on appeal to one year in prison as a suspended sentence for what the judge said were violations of the Racism and Negationism Act.

The sentence stems from racist memes that were not even posted by him, but by members of a group chat he administrated seven years ago.

The sentence was delivered today by the Court of Appeal in Ghent, although Van Langenhove does not accept the sentence, and the case now goes into cassation.

On X, Van Langenhove simply wrote, “Guilty. 12 months in jail. Madness.”

He later clarified upon receipt of the written verdict that the custodial sentence “appears to be a suspended sentence,” which he suspects is “most likely because the prisons in Belgium are literally full of illegal migrants.”

“Most people don’t realize that the end result of such a sentence is the same. One politically incorrect tweet can now put me in jail. One meme sent by someone else in a group chat I am in can turn the suspended sentence into an effective one. This suspended sentence is the gravest form of censorship they could pursue and an effective way to kill activism,” he added.

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Washington Teacher Fired for Reading ‘the N-Word’ from a Passage in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’

In what some believe to be another case of political correctness gone awry, a teacher at West Valley High School in Spokane, Washington, claims he was fired for reading the “n-word” aloud during a class discussion of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s iconic novel about racial injustice in the Jim Crow South.

The former West Valley High School teacher, Matthew Mastronardi, was secretly recorded by a student while reading a passage from the school-approved text that uses the n-word in its historical context.

In a series of posts on X, Mastronardi explained that while he teaches Spanish, he had overheard two students discussing how they were instructed to skip over “the n-word” while reading the novel in their English class.

Mastronardi wrote, “I was astonished and expressed disagreement, saying, ‘That’s silly; it undermines the book’s historical context and disrespects the author’s intent to use accurate language.’ A girl asked me in front of the class, ‘Would you read the word?’ I replied, ‘Yes, I would read every word.’”

“A male student immediately handed me the book and said, ‘Okay, do it.’ I knew the situation was serious with 30 students watching, wondering if I would read,” Mastronardi continued. “Nervous but committed, I saw it as a teachable moment about context and literary honesty in reading. I read a passage aloud, including the word ‘nigger,’ unaware I was being recorded.”

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Whistleblower claims Lockheed Martin eliminated whites from bonuses – ‘and they wrote it all down’

A whistleblower has come forward claiming America’s largest defense contractor has been awarding bonuses based on skin color rather than merit.

The whistleblower told right-wing DEI expert Christopher Rufo that they were preparing year-end bonus recommendations for Lockheed Martin’s aeronautics division in 2022 when they were told their “comp adder” list contained too many white people.

“I got a call from [human resources director] La Wanda [Moorer] last night regarding diversity stats on comp adder,” top Lockheed Martin official Santiago Bulnes wrote to the whistleblower in an email, according to a report published by Rufo at City Journal.

“They took a run at getting your few approved and we’re told that we need to fit in the box. I asked her to send you the list of diversity names to simplify the task of finding the best in the group,” he added.

Afterward, other officials in Lockheed’s human resources department reportedly told the whistleblower to add over a dozen minorities to the “comp adder” list and remove an equal number of white people, never mind whether or not the people deserved to be on the list or not.

The whistleblower was reportedly outraged that Lockheed was requiring managers like them to reward bonuses “on the basis of their [employees’] skin color alone and contrary to documented performance.”

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Democrats Planning to Run in 2028 Are Desperately Trying to Distance Themselves From Wokeness

Democrats clearly know ‘wokeness’ is a loser, because the ones who we know are planning to run for president in 2028 are running away from it as fast as they can.

The real trick is going to come as we get closer to the election and Democrat base voters start paying attention. How do you suppose they are going to feel when their presidential candidates start trying to publicly backtrack on issues like trans people in sports, or trying to take a hard line on the border and immigration?

These Democrats will find themselves in an impossible position. People on the right won’t believe them and people on the left will feel betrayed by them.

They have painted themselves into a corner.

Politico reports:

The Great Un-Awokening

Ambitious Democrats with an eye on a presidential run are in the middle of a slow-motion Sister Souljah moment.

Searching for a path out of the political wilderness, potential 2028 candidates, especially those hailing from blue states, are attempting to ratchet back a leftward lurch on social issues some in the party say cost them the November election.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, who is Black, vetoed a bill that took steps toward reparations passed by his state legislature. California Gov. Gavin Newsom called it “unfair” to allow transgender athletes to participate in female college and youth sports. And Rahm Emanuel has urged his party to veer back to the center…

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How ‘Equity’ debases education

In the current backlash against DEI, most criticism is focused on the “D” — diversity — which replaces the principle of meritocracy with racial criteria in hiring, admissions, and promotions. Notorious examples of implementation include police and fire departments lowering requirements for education and physical fitness, or aviation authorities adopting  biographical assessment in place of traditional skill-based hiring evaluations.

The “E” — equity — is more complex. Equity has replaced the concept of equality, which progressive ideology in the U.S. deems discriminatory because of its emphasis on individual effort that may result in unequal outcomes. A symbolic definition is that the educational equity must provide every child with what he needs to achieve his full academic and social potential. This vision resembles Karl Marx’s idealistic communism that provides resources “to each according to his needs.” Although formulated in the Marxist sense, equity is more restrictive because it is supposed to benefit children from only “underprivileged” backgrounds. But, beyond empty reasoning, equity’s actual goal is absolute equality in the educational outcomes regardless of individual ability or effort. To accomplish this, curricula and teaching methodology are being drastically rewritten in many parts of the country.

The STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields have come under increased scrutiny. Critics argue that these disciplines have historically been tools of nationalism, colonialism, and systemic inequity. As a result, some school districts across the country are scaling back advanced curricular offerings. Mathematics has especially faced pressure due to its perceived role in perpetuating discrimination and cultural dominance. Many equity-focused proposals aim to reduce the emphasis on mathematics in school programs.  Common suggestions include eliminating accelerated mathematical tracks in middle school, removing early-entry algebra for gifted students, and consolidating high school algebra and geometry into an “integrated math” course.

Aligned with these equity principles are significant changes in teaching methodology. Traditional grading practices are increasingly viewed as inequitable and are being reconsidered or eliminated in some districts. Proposals often include removing homework deadlines and allowing late work without penalty. In subjects such as reading and mathematics, achievement levels are being abolished, with all students placed in honors classes regardless of academic performance.

In terms of student discipline, many schools have adopted “restorative justice” approaches as an alternative to traditional punitive measures. This model focuses on mediation and rehabilitation rather than suspension, emphasizing support not only for the victim, but the offender too. More than 20 states have already enacted policies introducing restorative justice in schools. These practices involve allowing misbehaving students to avoid traditional consequences and even receive incentives such as snacks or breaks in quiet spaces. The restorative justice programs let misbehavers blame factors outside their control, that is, typically societal injustice.

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UNCC official ‘no longer employed’ after being caught on video saying she covertly pushes DEI

A University of North Carolina Charlotte administrator who was secretly recorded admitting to finding ways to advance diversity, equity and inclusion ideology despite a ban on the ideology is no longer employed.

Accuracy in Media released a video of Janique Sanders on May 28 telling undercover journalists she and other university officials have “renamed,” “reorganized” and “recalibrated” to continue pushing DEI ideology.

Her comments seemed to contrast with a one-year-old University of North Carolina Board of Governors ban on DEI offices and programs systemwide.

“If you’re looking for an outward DEI position, it’s not going to happen,” she said on the edited video. “But if you are interested in doing work that is covert, there are opportunities.”

In a statement to The College Fix on Wednesday, UNCC’s spokesperson Christy Jackson said the “employee’s statements were inaccurate and do not reflect the University’s actions.”

“…The individual featured in the video had no policymaking authority, no role in compliance matters and was not authorized to speak on these issues. Following an internal review, the individual is no longer employed by UNC Charlotte,” Jackson said via email.

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Major bank announces end of de-banking policies on guns and political affiliation

After years of criticism from the right about unfair “de-banking” practices, a major U.S. bank announced the end of the policy as it relates to political affiliation and gun sales.

Citigroup announced that they changed their firearms policies, which had been instituted after the heinous 2018 school shooting in Parkland, Florida.

“We appreciate the concerns that are being raised regarding ‘fair access’ to banking services, and we are following regulatory developments, recent executive orders and federal legislation that impact this area,” the bank said in a statement.

The statement said Citigroup had updated its employee code of conduct to ensure that no one was discriminated against on the basis of their political affiliation.

Among those who claimed they were the targets of political de-banking were first lady Melania Trump and Eric Trump, who said the Trump Organization had been negatively affected.

In October, the first lady recalled in an interview the shock she felt on finding out a bank had “suddenly informed me they will not be able to do business with me anymore.”

She also said that a university returned her money when she tried to contribute to a philanthropic effort to fund scholarships for foster kids.

“They didn’t want to do business with me because of political affiliation, my political beliefs,” she added.

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