Tag: political correctness

The Descent Into (Utter) Madness

Little wonder that here and there sanity nostalgia is gripping the Western world, at least those isolated portions of it that are not internalising the sinister “new normal.” But it is seemingly to no avail. All commanding positions are firmly in the hands of lunatics, who are determined to turn a once great and exemplary civilisation into an asylum.

As George Orwell has taught us, language manipulation is at the frontline (yes, I have just broken one of the cardinal rules of his “Politics and the English Language,” but not his final injunction to “break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous”) of politicised mind-bending. The sort of language we are permitted to use circumscribes the thinking that we shall be allowed to engage in. The assault on language is, therefore, an integral component of the unrelenting warfare being waged for the conquest and control of the mind. Word elimination and reassignment of meaning, as Orwell also presciently noted, are essential elements of the campaign to reformat the mind and eventually to subjugate it.

A breath-taking example of how this process works was recently unveiled by the thoroughly brain-washed students of the once prestigious Brandeis University who, this time without prompting from their faculty elders and betters, voted to ban from their campus such odious words and phrases as “picnic” and “you guys,” for being “oppressive”. “Picnic” is prohibited because it allegedly evokes the lynching of Blacks.

The precocious young intellectuals took pains to produce an entire list of objectionable words and phrases, shocking award-winning novelist Joyce Carol Oates who tweeted in bewilderment: “What sort of punishment is doled out for a faculty member who utters the word ‘picnic’ at Brandeis? Or the phrase [also proscribed – S.K.] ‘trigger warning’? Loss of tenure, public flogging, self-flagellation?”

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National Archives ‘Task Force’ Suggests Racism “Trigger Warnings” For Constitution, Bill Of Rights

A National Archives ‘task force’ on racism has suggested placing trigger warnings around the building housing founding documents including the U.S. constitution, as well as declaring that the historical portrayal of the founding fathers has previously been “too positive”.

Fox News reports that the group has proclaimed the National Archives’ Rotunda building, which houses the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as an example of “structural racism”.

The task force has decreed that the building lauds “wealthy White men in the nation’s founding” and that documents on display contain “legacy descriptions that use racial slurs and harmful language to describe BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and other People of Color] communities,” as well as other offensive terms including “elderly,” “handicapped” and “illegal alien.”

The group wants new descriptions added to exhibits to “contextualize the records,” and notes placed to “forewarn audiences of content that may cause intense physiological and psychological symptoms.”

It also suggests creating “safe spaces” where those who cannot handle the exhibits dedicated to the nation’s founding can retreat and mentally stabilise themselves.

The report also states that events should be staged such as “dance or performance art in the space that invites dialogue about the ways that the United States has mythologized the founding era.”

The task force had a particular suggestion for how to portray the author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, noting that he is “described in this sample lesson plan as a ‘visionary’ who took ‘vigorous action’ to strengthen the ‘will of the nation to expand westward.”

It continues, “The plan does not mention that his policy of westward expansion forced Native Americans off their ancestral land, encouraged ongoing colonial violence, and laid the groundwork for further atrocities like the Trail of Tears.”

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Now ‘trigger warning’ is banned by Brandeis University along with the ‘offensive’ phrases ‘picnic’, ‘rule of thumb’ and ‘take a shot at it’

A liberal arts college in Massachusetts has warned its students and faculty against using ‘violent language’ – even banning the phrase ‘trigger warning’ for its association with guns.

Brandeis University in Waltham has created an anti-violence resource called the Prevention, Advocacy & Resource Center which provides information and advice to students and staff. 

It lists words and idioms, including ‘picnic’ and ‘rule of thumb,’ which it claims are ‘violent’ and suggests dreary alternatives such as ‘outdoor eating’ for the former and ‘general rule’ for the latter.

The college claims that ‘picnic is often associated with lynchings of black people in the United States, during which white spectators were said to have watched while eating, referring to them as picnics or other terms involving racial slurs against black people.’

Picnic is derived from the French ‘pique-nique,’ originally used to describe the taking of one’s own wine to a meal, which later evolved to encompass the sharing of food outdoors and started being used in England in the 18th century. 

Lynchings were often public spectacles and could be described as taking place in a picnic-like setting. A project by the Equal Justice Initiative entitled ‘Lynching in America’ notes that during the late 1800s and early 1900s, ‘white men, women, and children present watched the horrific murders while enjoying deviled eggs, lemonade, and whiskey in a picnic-like atmosphere.’

However, the word picnic itself is not derogatory and has no intrinsic links to slavery, lynchings or racism.  

Brandeis also disagrees with ‘rule of thumb’ which it claims ‘comes from an old British law allowing men to beat their wives with sticks no wider than their thumb.’

But this is another spurious etymological interpretation which has been wrongly attached to the phrase by myth and rumour.

The precise origins of the phrase are unclear but it is meant in the sense of approximating something using the thumb rather than a specific tool – there is no evidence of a legal application to wife beating.

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Portland Discovered Black People Commit More Minor Traffic Offences – So It Decided to Stop Enforcing Them

If there’s one thing the past five years have underscored, it’s that leftists embrace selective enforcement of the law.

They’ll go scorched-earth against Republicans and white people who commit the slightest infraction, but they routinely downplay or ignore egregious transgressions committed by Democrats or certain people of color.

One glaring example is the dropping of charges against Black Lives Matter rioters and looters who terrorized New York City last summer to “protest” George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis police custody.

Another example is the left’s ongoing encouragement of mass illegal immigration, which has unleashed an unprecedented border crisis.

The hypocrisy continued on Tuesday, as the Democrat-controlled city of Portland, Oregon, announced it no longer will enforce certain traffic laws — such as expired plates and broken headlights — after discovering that black people disproportionately violate them.

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Oxford Alumni Warn Woke Mob Wants ‘Sensitivity Readers’ To Vet And Edit University’s Oldest Newspaper

Oxford University alumni have slammed attempts by the Student Union there to employ “sensitivity readers” to vet, edit and place ‘trigger warnings’ on the institution’s oldest newspaper in order to resolve ‘problematic’ articles.

As the London Telegraph reports, ‘Student Consultancy of Sensitivity Readers’ are to be paid by Oxford Student Union to address “high incidences of insensitive material being published” by the Cherwell newspaper.

The SU has received complaints from some offended students that “problematic articles” are being published that contain “implicitly racist or sexist” or “just generally inaccurate and insensitive” opinions.

The newspaper has been in circulation for over 100 years and has always remained independent of the Student Union.

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Florida Man Hit With Felony Charges For Leaving Tire Tracks on LGBT Crosswalk

A Florida man was hit with felony charges after leaving tire tracks on an LGBT crosswalk, with activists attempting to get authorities to elevate the charges to include “defacing a memorial.”

“Alexander Jerich, 20, turned himself in to police in Delray Beach, Florida, on Thursday,” reports RT. “Jerich was seen on Monday allegedly pulling onto the intersection in a pickup truck and spinning his rear tires for around 15 seconds, leaving black streaks across the rainbow stripes and sending clouds of smoke into the air.”

The charges against Jerich were elevated from misdemeanor to felony after authorities said there was “evidence of prejudice” in his actions.

However, this isn’t enough for LGBT activists, who are trying to make police hit Jerich with charges of “defacing a memorial” under a law passed by Governor Ron DeSantis in April that was intended to protect actual statues and memorials from being torn down by left-wing hate mobs.

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Pentagon gets ‘woke’: Whistleblowers reveal segregation for ‘privilege walks,’ critical race theory

Sen. Tom Cotton has revealed some of the hundreds of whistleblower complaints from service members who object to critical race theory indoctrination in the military, including airmen being divided by race and sex into groups for “privilege walks.”

The service members also spoke out against receiving reading lists of critical race theory books as part of the Pentagon’s new anti-extremism and diversity training within the ranks.

“This is about a very specific kind of anti-American indoctrination that is seeping into some parts of our military,” Mr. Cotton said at a recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

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North Korean defector says ‘even North Korea was not this nuts’ after attending Ivy League school

As American educational institutions continue to be called into question, a North Korean defector fears the United States’ future “is as bleak as North Korea” after she attended one of the country’s most prestigious universities.

Yeonmi Park has experienced plenty of struggle and hardship, but she does not call herself a victim.

One of several hundred North Korean defectors settled in the United States, Park, 27, transferred to Columbia University from a South Korean university in 2016 and was deeply disturbed by what she found.

“I expected that I was paying this fortune, all this time and energy, to learn how to think. But they are forcing you to think the way they want you to think,” Park said in an interview with Fox News. “I realized, wow, this is insane. I thought America was different but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying.”

Those similarities include anti-Western sentiment, collective guilt and suffocating political correctness.

Yeonmi saw red flags immediately upon arriving at the school.

During orientation, she was scolded by a university staff member for admitting she enjoyed classic literature such as Jane Austen.

“I said ‘I love those books.’ I thought it was a good thing,” recalled Park.

“Then she said, ‘Did you know those writers had a colonial mindset? They were racists and bigots and are subconsciously brainwashing you.’”

It only got worse from there as Yeonmi realized that every one of her classes at the Ivy League school was infected with what she saw as anti-American propaganda, reminiscent to the sort she had grown up with.

“’American Bastard’ was one word for North Koreans” Park was taught growing up.

“The math problems would say ‘there are four American bastards, you kill two of them, how many American bastards are left to kill?'”

She was also shocked and confused by issues surrounding gender and language, with every class asking students to announce their preferred pronouns.

“English is my third language. I learned it as an adult. I sometimes still say ‘he’ or ‘she’ by mistake and now they are going to ask me to call them ‘they’? How the heck do I incorporate that into my sentences?”

“It was chaos,” said Yeonmi. “It felt like the regression in civilization.”

“Even North Korea is not this nuts,” she admitted. “North Korea was pretty crazy, but not this crazy.”

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Austin Paper Refuses to Release Police’s Description of Black Male Mass Shooting Suspect to Avoid ‘Perpetuating Stereotypes’

The Austin American-Statesman on Saturday refused to release police’s description of an at-large black male mass shooting suspect because they said it “could be harmful in perpetuating stereotypes.”

“Police have only released a vague description of the suspected shooter as of Saturday morning,” the Statesman wrote in an editor’s note at the bottom of their article. “The Austin American-Statesman is not including the description as it is too vague at this time to be useful in identifying the shooter and such publication could be harmful in perpetuating stereotypes.”

The Austin Police Department stated that “it is unknown if there is one, or multiple suspects involved” but one suspect was “described as a black male, with dread locks, wearing a black shirt and a skinny build.”

Austin Police reported on Saturday evening that one suspect was arrested and they’re still looking for another but provided no further details.

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