Writers of the World, Denounce! Progressive activists repeat the sins of the past

James Kirchick February 21, 2023

Perhaps the most enduring of communism’s many ignominious contributions to Western intellectual life is the collective letter of denunciation.

In 1958, after the writer Boris Pasternak won the Nobel Prize in literature, the presidium of the Union of Soviet Writers voted unanimously to expel him in a move that was reported on the front page of The New York Times. According to this governmentally controlled body, the author of Dr. Zhivago had committed “treason with regard to the Soviet people, the cause of socialism, peace, and progress paid for by a Nobel Prize in order to intensify the Cold War.” Articles in Literaturnaya Gazeta, an official organ of the union, denounced the Jewish author as a “Judas” and likened him to a “snake” that had emerged from the “poetical dungwaters of lyrical manure.”

In 1969, the union expelled another author whose work challenged the Soviet regime, Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, for “antisocial behavior.” The following year, Solzhenitsyn, like Pasternak before him, won the Nobel. In an angry statement, also reported on the front page of the Times, the union decried how “works by this writer that were illegally taken abroad and published there have long been used by Western reactionary circles for anti-Soviet aims.”

In 1973, an open letter signed by 40 members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences denounced the physicist Andrei Sakharov for his criticisms of Kremlin human rights abuses, which, they alleged, had found favor with “the most reactionary imperialist circles” abroad. Sakharov, too, won the Nobel Prize (for peace) two years later, only for 72 members of the academy—a full third of its membership—to sign a florid statement declaring that the award was “of an unworthy and provocatory nature and is blasphemy against the noble ideals cherished by us all of humanism, peace, justice, and friendship between peoples of all countries.”.........To Read More....

The Left Wants to Abolish Everything, Even This Column

Stephen Moore Jul 26, 2022 

Any aging baby boomer (like myself) knows that the anthem of the radicals of the 1960s and 1970s was sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Let the good times roll. Back then, the joke was that a conservative was someone who lived in mortal fear that someone, somewhere, was having fun.

But if this new generation of authoritarian liberals has its way, sex and rock 'n' roll will be illegal.

As I've said in the past in these pages, the ironic ideological twist that has occurred over the past 20 years is that the once permissive "live and let live" Left is now the nonpermissive Left. The leftists in America are the new puritans.

If you think I'm exaggerating, consider in just the past few months the laundry list of things that liberals want to abolish. The same movement that wanted to legalize almost all drugs now wants to make smoking a menthol cigarette illegal. It's OK to roll a joint, but not a tobacco cigarette. (Just for the record, I am not a smoker -- and have never been one.)

The Left wants to save the planet by abolishing cars. No, not all cars for now. But if you have a car with a combustible engine that guzzles gasoline or diesel, they are coming after it. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg wants all new cars to be battery-operated over the next 10 years.

Never mind that Americans have a special love affair with their cars. Polls show by decisive margins that we want to decide for ourselves what kind of car we will drive, not leave it up to Uncle Sam. But if the climate change fanatics have their way, your right to choose your own car won't exist. Oh, and by the way, in the Left's utopian future, there won't be any need for cars for the masses. We will ride around on buses and trains. Only the political elite -- the beautiful people -- will have cars.

Some of the more radical environmental groups want to abolish refrigerators (they use too much energy), light bulbs, guns (of course), straws (they kill dolphins), diving boards at pools (too dangerous), charcoal grills and disposable diapers. They want to regulate the temperature on your thermostat in your home in the winter and summer months so you don't use too much energy. They are talking about wanting to install government-controlled switches so that bureaucrats can set the temperature in your bedroom. The Left wants strict restrictions on how much water can spray out of the nozzle of your shower so that you don't waste water.

Now, the latest planetary villain that needs to be outlawed is ... plastics. On June 30, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law to reduce sharply the use of plastics in everything from water bottles to grocery bags, containers and packaging. This is the state's solution to the mounting garbage crisis that the politicians can't solve. Violators will face fines as high as $50,000 per infraction.

The new law sets strict recycling requirements, but apparently, no one told these genius lawmakers that recycling plastics requires huge amounts of energy, and sorry, that can't happen if you're dependent on wind and solar power.

The good news is that at least in America, we still have a right to complain openly about these mounting restrictions on the way we live our lives free of a tyrannical government. But for how long? Liberals will no doubt soon regard columns like this as subversive "hate speech" and abolish this, too.

America’s Future Leaders? Don’t Bet On It

Posted on April 1, 2022 by John Hinderaker in Education, Law

Yale Law School has long been a disgrace. I was surprised, when I searched for YLS on our site, at how often we have commented on farcical events there. Way back in 2003, we wrote about Yale Law School’s disgusting treatment of military recruiters. That was followed by Yale’s lawsuit trying to have the Solomon Amendment declared unconstitutional. The Solomon Amendment provides that universities that receive federal funding must treat military recruiters in non-discriminatory fashion. The horror! Yale and its fellow left-wing institutions lost 8-0 in the Supreme Court. Elena Kagan was among those leading the anti-military charge.

In 2014, we commented on a pitifully weak op-ed co-authored by the Dean of Harvard Law School and the Provost of Yale Law School complaining about the fact that police officers were not charged with homicide in the Michael Brown (a clear case of self-defense) and Eric Garner cases.

Then there was the hysterical anti-Brett Kavanaugh letter signed by YLS students, alumni and professors. (“Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination presents an emergency — for democratic life, for our safety and freedom, for the future of our country. … He is a threat to many of us, despite the privilege bestowed by our education, simply because of who we are. . . people will die if he is confirmed.”)

In 2021, we wrote about a controversy over whether the Yale Law Journal is “racist,” even though it accepts black and Hispanic students at rates far greater than whites. Later last year, Scott covered in a series of posts the story of Trent Colbert, a YLS student who apparently didn’t get the memo. After sending classmates a jocular email inviting them to a party at his “trap house,” he was subjected to Kafkaesque torment by the law school’s administration–torment that he resisted, ultimately successfully.

Finally, last month, a group of fascist Yale Law students successfully shouted down a Federalist Society program that featured a dialogue between a leftist and a representative of the Alliance Defending Freedom. The protest was rowdy enough that police were summoned to maintain order..............To Read More..

Pulitzer Center Helps 1619 Project Teachers Subvert Laws Banning Racism

The nonprofit, leftwing billionaire-funded center hosted a webinar for educators and librarians offering tips on how to use their 1619 Project material and skirt laws banning its use.

By Mary Grabar December 17, 2021 @ The Federalist

On December 13, the nonprofit Pulitzer Center hosted a webinar for educators and librarians offering tips on how to use their 1619 Project material and skirt laws banning its use.

The leftwing billionaire-funded center slipped premade 1619 Project lessons into thousands of schools immediately after the publication of the original 1619 Project, a special issue of The New York Times Magazine on Aug. 18, 2019. The mishmash of essays, articles, literary writing, and photographs claimed to reframe our nation as a “slavocracy” that began in 1619 — the year about 20 Africans arrived in Jamestown — not 1776. Per the formula of critical race theory, the rest has been a race struggle between white oppressors and black victims.

In the webinar, New York Times Magazine editor Jake Silverstein moderated a “conversation” between 1619 Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones and Donnalie Jamnah, a former high school English teacher hired by the Pulitzer Center to coordinate with educators. This webinar further confirmed that The 1619 Project is an indoctrination tool.

The webinar advised educators that although a law may prohibit requiring The 1619 Project, it may not necessarily forbid its use as an alternate reading. And though a school board may ban The 1619 Project, teachers should find out if the board has the authority to do so. It directed educators to an upcoming event in February that would present student work and share information about “how teachers have protected themselves.”

The December virtual event was a continuation of the outreach that offers educators downloadable curricula, ongoing continuing education, and $5,000 teacher grants. Such efforts to subvert laws intended to protect students from propaganda is funded, ultimately, by taxpayers, through tax subsidization of nonprofits and their billionaire funders, and through salaries for teachers and librarians.

Questionable Collaboration with For-Profit Companies

The webinar also revealed the questionable collaborative efforts between for-profit companies (The New York Times) and nonprofits (the Pierre Omidyar- and Mark Zuckerberg-funded Pulitzer Center). On behalf of The New York Times, Madeline Felix in her introductory remarks gave a sales pitch and encouraged the 6,000-plus viewers (including K-12 teachers, librarians, community college instructors, homeschooling parents, and nursing school personnel) to purchase the newspaper at the discounted campus-wide rate.

Librarians have become especially useful for getting materials to students outside of the formal class setting. They are important in ensuring that libraries have the two 1619 Project books recently published by Penguin Random House — “Born on the Water,” a picture book, and “The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story,” a 600-page expansion of the original work. In another display of for-profit/nonprofit coordination, Penguin Random House is using a consortium of bookstores, a nonprofit that distributes “diverse books” (partially funded by Penguin Random House!), and Hannah-Jones via Twitter to encourage fans to purchase copies to donate to libraries, schools, organizations, and after-school programs.

The two books (both copyrighted by The New York Times) are clearly intended for use in schools. Penguin Random House offers teachers of all grades a guide for the books, which are produced by the educational arm of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Learning for Justice.

Author Says Historical Critiques Equal Censorship

Hannah-Jones insisted that objections to the use of her materials in classrooms is censorship because the historical accuracy could not be a legitimate concern.

Informed by her reading of such anti-Trump tracts as “How Fascism Works” by Jason Stanley, she interpreted the efforts to keep her “journalism” out of classrooms as part of the larger effort towards “authoritarianism” and fascism. It is no coincidence, she said, that the states “censoring” her work were also enacting laws restricting abortion and voting. Hannah-Jones has become a political pundit, appearing on MSNBC to describe how “1619 explains” current events, such as January 6. (White supremacy, like everything bad, began in 1619.)

The political intent of the expanded 1619 Project is clearer than ever. Most of the historical errors of the original Project remain and are even compounded. The endnotes and references are intended to put on a scholarly gloss. The quasi-historical/political essays, creative prose, “poetry,” and photographs serve as preparation for the final essay’s argument for reparations.

Defenders Deny Project Is Divisive

To Silverstein’s recounting of the claims that the project is “divisive” and makes “kids feel bad,” Jamnah said nonsense. Anything that could make white students feel evil was “not in the project.”

Jamnah apparently sees nothing objectionable in this sentence from the original project and repeated in Hannah-Jones’s essay, “Democracy,” in the book, intended for high-school students: “In response to Black demands for [their] rights, white Americans strung them from trees, beat them and dumped their bodies in muddy rivers, assassinated them in their front yards, firebombed them on buses, mauled their dogs, peeled back their skin with firehoses, and murdered their children with explosives set off inside a church.”

“White America” also constructed “a savagely enforced system of racial apartheid” that also provided “inspiration” for Nazi Germany’s racial policies. Nor did Jamnah object to kindergartners being read “Born on the Water” and hearing about how “white people” “kidnapped” “our people,” “forced them into the bottom of an evil ship” and about how “white men” “traded another’s child, another’s momma and daddy.”

As Jamnah revealed by referencing 170 teachers and administrators who are developing materials for several subject areas for kindergarten through college, The 1619 Project is intended to saturate the educational experience of Americans at every stage and in every subject. (Already, students who have been subjected to it in high school find themselves studying it again in college classes.) By sheer reach alone, The 1619 Project will have the effect of replacing 1776, despite Hannah-Jones’s protestations to the contrary.

As teachers spend weeks and weeks on The 1619 Project, valuable time is lost for studying real history, civics, and literature. This is not to mention the human waste in emotionally scarred and ignorant young adults readied to ravage cities in a reprise of The 1619 Project riots of 2020.

We need to remain vigilant, even in states that have passed laws forbidding the use of The 1619 Project and Critical Race Theory in public classrooms. Publishing corporations are raking in profits producing materials that American taxpayers clearly don’t want.

Mary Grabar earned her PhD from the University of Georgia and taught college English for 20 years. She is now a resident fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization in Clinton, New York, and author of the new book "Debunking The 1619 Project: Exposing the Plan to Divide America" (Regnery, September 7, 2021). Her writing can be found at DissidentProf.com and at marygrabar.com.

 

1619 Project Born on the Water Jake Silverstein k-12 education Mark Zuckerberg New York Times Magazine Nikole Hannah-Jones Penguin Random House Pierre Omidyar public schools Pulitzer Center The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

How Progressives Rewrote American History

Despite these modern progressives’ positions of privilege and systemic advantage, a new constitutionalist critique of progressivism prevents them from claiming final victory. 

By Bradley C.S. Watson August 11, 2021 

America’s founders understood that political change is inevitable. They thought it must come about through constitutional mechanisms, with the consent of the governed, and must never infringe on the natural rights of citizens. Progressives—rejecting the idea that any rights, including the right of consent to government, are natural—accept no such limits. 

Progressivism insists that the principled American constitutionalism of fixed natural rights and limited and dispersed powers must be overturned and replaced by an organic, evolutionary model of the Constitution. 

Historical progress should be facilitated by experts dedicated to the expansion of the public sphere and political control—especially at the national level. As progressivism has grown into modern liberalism, the commitment to extra-constitutional “progress” is broadly shared across elite political, academic, legal, and religious circles. Politics is thus increasingly identified with a mix of activism, expertise, and the desire for “change.”.........To Read More......

 

PhD Student Says He was "Purged" by University for Criticising Communist China

Kurt Zindulkam 8 Aug 2021183

A Swiss PhD student at the University of St Gallen has alleged that he was removed from the doctoral programme and had three years of research quashed after he posted critical sentiments on social media about the Chinese Communist Party regime.  Oliver Gerber (a pseudonym used to protect the identity of his girlfriend in Wuhan, China) said that after posting on Twitter for just ten days about Communist China, he was cancelled by his own university after his supervising professor received a “complaint from China about your Twitter”.

The professor informed the PhD student in March of last year that she had received “angry emails from China” which alleged that he was posting “neo-Nazi-like content” on social media, the Swiss daily newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung reported. “Ultimately, it may even turn out that I won’t be able to get a visa to China because of you. This is definitely going too far, and I would have to end our advisory relationship,” she told Gerber, adding that he should “tone down his political expression immediately”.

The professor went on to say that she had “no desire to receive emails like this because of one of my doctoral students.”  One of Gerber’s posts (in English) on Twitter read: “#CCP made fighting #COVID-19 plan B. Only to be executed if Plan A – covering it up – fails. Those are the actions of paranoid cowards. They neither deserve my respect nor gratitude #ChinaLiedPeopleDied.”  After becoming aware of his posts on social media, his girlfriend in Wuhan urged him to stop, warning of possible retaliation from the Communist regime.

“I’m in Switzerland, not China,” Gerber responded, declaring: “I can say what I want here.”.........To Read More....

The Left Allows No Deviation From Orthodoxy

July 25, 2021 Francis Menton 33 Comments @ Manhattan Contrarian

The United States is currently subject to a sharp political divide between the left and the right, with just around half of the country on each side. The two sides obviously differ in the government policies that they advocate, but there is another difference that I think is even more important. The right, or at least most of it, welcomes differences of opinion, while the left allows no dissent from the orthodoxy of the moment.

An op-ed by Ben Shapiro in today’s New York Post provides several notable examples. But this one best illustrates the left/right divide on tolerance of dissent:

[In 2019] I attended a rather tony political summit — perhaps the only real ritzy cocktail party I’ve ever gone to. One of the other attendees happened to be one of the more prominent left-wing podcasters in the country. After a few pleasantries, I suggested that perhaps we ought to do an election-year crossover podcast. “The numbers,” I said, “would be extraordinary. And I know my audience would love it. We’re always having on guests who disagree.”  “I’m sure your audience would be cool with it,” the podcaster answered. “But mine would murder me.” 

And Shapiro provides plenty of other instances of erstwhile members of the political left learning the hard way what happens when you stray from orthodoxy: for example, Martina Navratilova and J.K. Rowling for saying that “a man calling himself a woman is not in fact a woman,” and Sam Harris and Steven Pinker for saying that “cancel culture is real.”

Over here on the right, debate is what makes life interesting. The Federalist Society has made setting up debates its thing for over thirty years, often between left and right, but equally often between different branches of the right, such as law and order conservatives versus libertarians. There are wide differences among those on the right on such issues as the drug war, civil rights and liberties, privacy, immigration, free trade, and assertive/interventionist foreign policy., among many others. Meanwhile, in recent years, it has become more and more difficult to get anyone on the left to participate in many of our debates, particularly when the subject is an issue of quasi-religious significance to the left, such as climate change, gender, or race relations.

For a truly extreme example of what happens over there on the left when orthodoxy is breached even a little, you need to check out the letter just out from Allison Hill, CEO of the American Booksellers Association. Here’s the background. It seems that every month or so the ABA sends out to member book stores a box of materials, containing several books that the organization suggests stocking, as well as other promotional information from publishers. This month’s box contained, among other things, a copy of Abigail Shrier’s “Irreversible Damage,” and promotional materials for Candace Owens’s “Blackout” (with introduction by Larry Elder). Here is how the Washington Post introduces its July 16 story on the subject:

As soon as Casey Morrissey opened the box of books, they [sic] were furious. The title at the top of the stack was Abigail Shrier’s “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” a contentious tome that has sparked cries of transphobia since its release last summer. “Do you know how that feels, as a trans bookseller and book buyer?” Morrissey, who works at Greenlight Bookstores in Brooklyn tweeted Wednesday. “It isn’t even a new title, so it really caught me in the gut. Do better.”

And then, says the WaPo, “a firestorm ensued.” And thus the letter from Ms. Hill of the ABA. Here is how it begins:

Dear Booksellers:

This week we did horrific harm when we included an anti-trans book in ABA’s July box mailing to members. Last week, we did terrible and racist harm when featuring the bestseller Blackout by Dhonielle Clayton, Tiffany D. Jackson, Nic Stone, Angie Thomas, Ashley Woodfolk, and Nicola Yoon with the wrong cover image, conflating it with an image of the cover of a book by a different Black [sic] author, a right-wing extremist. We traumatized and endangered members of the trans community. We erased Black [sic] authors, conflated Black [sic] authors, and put the authors in danger through a forced association. We further marginalized communities we want to support.

A truly epic grovel. Note that Ms. Hill is unable even to name the authors or titles of the two offending (conservative) books. It seems that even mentioning the title or author of such a book has become “horrific harm” or maybe “terrible and racist harm,” let alone “traumatizing” and putting authors “in danger through a forced association.” All I can think of is the confession of Zinovyev at his 1936 Stalin show trial.

Meanwhile, you will likely recognize the unmentionable Shrier and Owens books as important works and also as bestsellers. Both were released about a year ago — “Irreversible Damage” on June 30, 2020, and “Blackout” on September 15, 2020. By November, “Irreversible Damage” was ranked #15 in sales at Amazon among all books, and #1 in several categories, including Political Commentary & Opinion, Political Conservatism & Liberalism, and LGBT Demographic Studies. 

Owens’s “Blackout” rose to #1 at Amazon in the category Political Parties, and was #2 on the New York Times bestseller list among all non-fiction during October 2020. Also, Owens’s co-author, Larry Elder, is currently on the ballot in the recall election for Governor of California, and has a very decent chance of winning and becoming the Governor. (If Newsom gets less than 50% of the vote in the recall, then he is out, and the candidate among those to replace him who gets the most votes becomes Governor. Newsom is currently at 48% in the polls, and Elder leads all other potential replacement candidates by double digits.)

Yet somehow at the American Booksellers Association, these books cannot even be mentioned by name. Incidentally, it seems bizarre to me that the authors of the new “Blackout” think they have cause to be upset, when they chose to give their book the exact same title as a bestselling book by other black authors that had come out just a few months previously. (Owens’s book does have a subtitle.). And finally, how is the demeaning treatment of Owens and Elder by the ABA not racist?

In Defense of American Democracy

In Defense of American Democracy: Andy Ngo's New Book, Cowbells at Portland State, and Scaring Powell's Bookstore by Brandon Smith, guest contributor, June 15, 2021 (posted by Mary Grabar) @ Dissident Prof.

 

Nineteenth-century political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville declared a free press to be the most indispensable element of a functioning liberal democracy. Without the ability for journalists' thoughts and writings to be freely circulated, individuals in democratic nations may be isolated in their opinions. Yet combinations of private American citizens have attempted to stifle the dissemination of information compiled by certain journalists in order to achieve antidemocratic aims.

In between my separate stints of studying political science in community college and university, I developed a desire to gain a greater understanding of my own country's political system. I already learned to have a healthy fear of tyrannical majorities that tend to arise from pure democracies after studying James Madison's Federalist No. 10, but sought to differentiate such potentially repressive democracy from the character of American democracy as I conceptualized it. In examining Tocqueville's influential work Democracy in America, I realized America's early European settlers idealized political equality as many Americans do in the current age. However, it would take the recognition of certain liberties of its citizens for America to establish a system of political equality lest the freedom of minorities be trammeled by an overzealous majority. Tocqueville stressed the usefulness of a free press to act as a defense of oppressed members of a community through their ability to appeal to a national, or perhaps global, audience.

Tocqueville's words disturbingly seem to lack salience in America's body politic some 180 years after they were written. In my home city of Portland, Oregon, mobs have attempted to stop the sale of local journalist Andy Ngo's new book, Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy. The book provides an in-depth look at the far-left “antifascist” movement whose constituency advocates for the abolition of capitalism, police, and the United States of America itself. Ngo's book describes the movement's mid-twentieth century European origin, its germination in Portland and the broader United States, to its establishment of so-called “autonomous zones” which law enforcement has been restricted from entering in major American cities like Seattle.

Ngo's journalistic ubiquity is on display in Unmasked, which offers his firsthand account of numerous democratically deviant acts committed in the name of opposing what their participants hold to be fascism. But as Ngo explains, “what is defined as fascism is left wide open” (pg. 8). Prior to the release of Ngo's book, one of a number of masked individuals protesting the sale of Unmasked outside popular Portland bookstore Powell's stated that it was an example of “active fascism.” They went on to contrast such a brand of fascism with that of Hitler's Mein Kampf, which, they conceded, holds historical worth.

Those who protested Powell's sale of Ngo's book attained some level of success. While Unmasked has been available from Powell's via mail order, representatives of the retailer announced that the title would not be available on the shelves of Powell's stores. Owner Emily Powell noted that the protests presented a risk to employees' safety. Like many Portland residents, I have a fondness for browsing the aisles of Powell's multiple locations for interesting reads. However, Ngo's important insight on looming political radicalism may now be missed entirely by the average Powell's browser.

Unmasked offers a fascinating glimpse into the political leanings of its author, which seem to be more in line with those of Tocqueville than anyone I would deem to be fascistic (that is, authoritarian or illiberal). As the son of South Vietnamese immigrants, Ngo is no stranger to the position of vulnerable minorities. He praises America's system of liberal democracy, which provided his family a haven of safety and stability after his parents escaped the communist takeover of their home country, where, because of their connections to the fallen South Vietnamese regime, they were subject to forced labor and communist indoctrination. Ngo's familial narrative about his parents’ escape from radical left-wing oppression helps explain how I ended up crossing paths with him at Portland State University as he covered the beat of leftist extremism in the City of Roses as a journalist.

The Cowbell Incident

In March of 2019, I attended a speaking event in PSU's Smith Memorial Student Union building featuring controversial local videographer Mike Strickland who was previously banned from campus for a two-year period after being charged with multiple gun-related offenses during a July 2016 “Don't Shoot PDX” rally in downtown Portland. I had been familiar with Strickland's work as an independent journalist and content producer for the “Laughing At Liberals” YouTube channel, which started documenting Portland far-left political activity years before Ngo reported on the beat. The Portland State College Republicans (of which I had been a member) welcomed Strickland. The multi-angled video package he presented supported his argument that he had been provoked into drawing his firearm at the rally by a group of individuals dressed in Antifa's signature “black-bloc” style (complete with black hooded sweatshirts and face coverings). The group apparently coordinated to remove Strickland from the scene of the rally outside the Multnomah County Justice Center--where Ngo would be attacked by a black-bloc clad mob roughly three years later.

Strickland's speech was interrupted seemingly seconds after it started by the repeated clang of a cowbell sounded by a bearded heckler who introduced himself to the audience as Sawyer Bohannon. He stated that he intended to disrupt the engagement and complained that Strickland had pointed a gun at him and his comrades. Strickland identified the gentleman as the same person who shouted “Communism will win!” into a megaphone prior to his fellow protester being hit by a pickup truck crossing the Hawthorne Bridge at another memorable Portland protest in December 2017. While campus police were present during Strickland's scheduled speech, they allowed the disruption to continue. Though the heckler exerted great effort to deplatform the speaker, I stayed at the event on principle with other attendees who had come to hear Strickland voice his point-of-view. The disruption lasted for over an hour, but the audience's collective patience was sufficient to override the attempted heckler's veto and Strickland was able to complete his presentation. The cowbell-induced headache I endured would not be in vain as Ngo had been in attendance at the event and had the means to break the story of the disruption to a national audience.

Within two days of the cowbell catastrophe, I saw video footage of myself at the Strickland event featured on cable television. Laura Ingraham, host of “The Ingraham Angle” program on the Fox News Channel, welcomed Ngo and Dinesh D’Souza to her show. She criticized Portland State's handling of the disruption and discussed several other incidents of conservatives being silenced on college campuses, including D'Souza, who had been shouted down while delivering a speech at American University four months prior to the incident at PSU. I appreciate Ngo's ability to bring what seemed at the time to be a pesky nuisance amid localized political discourse to the focus of a national prime time television-viewing audience. The cowbell tale would ultimately capture the attention of America's highest office of power.

Ingraham's coverage of the communistic cow-belling mentioned then-President Donald Trump's proposal to enact an executive order designed to limit federal funding to universities that failed to uphold free speech on their campuses. Two weeks after Ingraham's broadcast with Ngo and D'Souza, Trump signed Executive Order 13864 into effect with the aim of “improving free inquiry, transparency, and accountability at colleges and universities.” Trump cited a recent violent episode at the University of California, Berkeley, in which a conservative activist was punched in the face while trying to recruit students to join an organization as an example of a campus free speech violation. He also cited Portland State's cowbell debacle. “You see the cowbell scene...That was a disgraceful thing at a school; at a university,” Trump said,  prior to the order's official implementation.

The story of the disruption I experienced may not have made it to the lips of the leader of the free world if it had not been for Ingraham showcasing Ngo's reporting. The former president's stated proclivity to regularly view Fox News programs such as Ingraham's is well known. While his executive order provides few details of how it may improve the state of free inquiry on campus, it affirms that the official policy position of the U.S. Government's executive branch is to promote open debate at colleges that receive federal research funding. Though current President Joe Biden has rescinded part of Trump's educational reform agenda via an executive order of his own, Executive Order 13864 remains unrevoked as of this writing. 

As Tocqueville suggests, it is vital to the functioning of a democratic nation that journalists retain the ability to share information with the population. Brave journalists like Andy Ngo are targeted for obvious reasons by opponents of liberal democracy. The censoring of Unmasked signals a dangerous precedent. The potential for Ngo's words to be read and considered throughout the United States is crucial for the future of democracy in America.

Brandon Smith is a graduate of Portland State University with a bachelor's degree in political science and has studied under such dissident professors as Bruce Gilley and Peter Boghossian. He currently works as a certified pharmacy technician in Portland, Oregon.

 

The Left’s War on Free Speech

Arthur Milikh April 06, 2021

The Left wants to ban “hate speech” using the powerful national institutions they now govern.  They do not hide this intention but say so openly. Powerful tools—like Big Tech, a nearly unified press, and the national security state—give speech restrictionists the impression that this goal can and should be pursued. But exactly what kind of speech do they want to ban, and exactly how would this ban transform America?

“Hate speech,” on the surface, seems to mean racial epithets, slurs, or Holocaust denial. But such speech has already disappeared from America’s public square. There is no “hate speech” in any recognizable form anywhere in America outside of the bowels of the Internet or in rap music. If anything, America’s public square is governed by exactly the opposite tendency: corporate, media, educational, and social powers fiercely punish such utterances. The N-word is the only word in the English language which is forbidden from being uttered. And yet, calls to ban “hate speech” only increase.

The American Left is not interested in or concerned about racial epithets. In reality, “hate speech” is the words, thoughts, and judgments of the oppressor group, which marginalized groups claim harms their self-respect. The oppressor group, in virtually every case, is whites—especially white males, though white women also are carriers of “whiteness,” the original sin...........To Read More....

 

JAMA pulls plug on editor; fired for questioning 'existence of structural racism' on podcast

By Jessica Chasmar- The Washington Times - Friday, April 9, 2021 

An editor at the Journal of the American Medical Association is out of a job after criticizing the concept of structural racism in the healthcare field during a February podcast.

Dr. James L. Madara, CEO and executive vice president of the American Medical Association, announced in a statement that the journal had accepted the resignation of Deputy Editor for Clinical Reviews and Education Dr. Edward H. Livingston, accusing him of hosting a “harmful” podcast that “both minimized the effects of systemic racism in health care and questioned its profound impact on millions of people across our country.”

The AMA’s CEO declared that “structural racism exists in the U.S. and in medicine” and that it’s “not opinion or conjecture” but a fact proven “through the science and in the evidence.”......To Read More...

Our Group Take - 1. The AMA stopped being relevant in 1965. Until Medicare came in, they were against it. The very moment it did come in, they changed course because they saw how it could benefit THEM, not the docs they supposedly represented. They started the reimbursement schedules, to the tune of big bucks. As it is, fewer than 10 percent of actual practicing docs belong to that wretched organization. An absolute sick joke. 

2. Talk about yet another vile and grossly anti-science anti-American action that will have a massive chilling effect on science in addition to academics. This is the sort of thing expected in totalitarian nations, not America for heaven's sake. And yet it's now rampant across the nation.

Canceling Gina Carano: Work Worthy of an Evil Empire

By Christopher Knight

 

Lucasfilm’s firing of Gina Carano may go down as one of the more 'textbook' examples of public relations blunders.  This past week the studio and its umbrella company Disney detached from Carano, following the latest in a series of social media posts which betrayed the political incorrectness of the former MMA fighter.

 

Carano – who had been portraying rebel-turned-mercenary Cara Dune on the hit Disney+ Star Wars series The Mandalorian – had shared the following on her Instagram account:

Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors…even by children. Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?

Do note that at no point does Miss Carano refer to Republicans, conservatives, or any other specific ideology.  She merely made an observation about history: something often rhyming like poetry, as George Lucas himself noted............. To Read More.....

 

The persecution of Gina Carano

Her sacking perfectly illustrates the hypocrisy and intolerance of the woke elites.

Brendan O'Neill Editor 12th February 2021 

It’s official: only liberals are allowed to talk shit about the Holocaust. That’s the take-home message of the Gina Carano scandal. For here we have a right-wing woman being shamed and sacked for doing what luvvies and leftish types have been doing for years: comparing the early 21st century to Nazi Germany.

The double standards are mind-blowing. Carano has been dumped by Disney, from her starring role in the Star Wars spin-off The Mandalorian, for suggesting that the political hatreds of the 2020s echo the nastiness of the Holocaust era. In an ill-advised Instagram story, she compared the flak that right-wingers like her get with the contempt visited upon Jews in 1930s Germany. ‘Hating someone for their political views’ is not that different to when the Nazis turned on Jewish people, she said..........To Read More....

• Disney’s Lucasfilm fired conservative actress Gina Carano
• Actress Gina Carano: New Film Partnership Brings ‘Hope to Everyone Living in Fear of Cancellation by the Totalitarian Mob’
• Gina Carano Fired From 'The Mandalorian' For Comparing Cancel Culture To Nazi Germany
• Canceling Gina Carano: Work Worthy of an Evil Empire  
• Report: Hasbro Stops Making Gina Carano’s ‘Star Wars’ Action Figure

Cruz, Hawley to Be Judged by 'Secretive' Senate Panel

Leah Barkoukis | @LeahBarkoukis | Feb 01, 2021 

Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) will be judged by a “secretive” Senate ethics panel over whether they had a part in inciting the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6. The Senate Ethics Committee probe “will unwind over an interminable timetable with little hint of where it is going,” Politico reports.

The committee says nothing about its business until actions are taken. And it has a lot of business before it: Seven Democratic senators filed a complaint against the two GOP senators who led the effort to object to the election results, arguing that they ‘lent legitimacy” to the cause of those who invaded the Capitol. Hawley fired back with a counter complaint alleging “improper conduct” for partisan gain.

The panel is led by Chair Chris Coons (D-Del.), who called for Cruz (R-Texas) and Hawley (R-Mo.) to resign, and Vice Chair James Lankford (R-Okla.), who planned to challenge the election results himself before backing away after the invasion of the Capitol. Coons and Lankford speak frequently to each other and have a warm relationship, just as Coons did with former Chairman Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.)....The committee's rules keep all actions of the panel secret without approval by a majority of the committee.

The last press release the committee released was in 2017, confirming an inquiry into former Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.). (Politico).........To Read More....

My Pillow CEO Says Bed Bath and Beyond, Kohl’s to Stop Selling His Products

By Zachary Stieber January 19, 2021

 

My Pillow products won’t be carried in Kohl’s or Bed Bath & Beyond any longer, the company’s CEO says. CEO Mike Lindell said Monday that his company recently was notified of the discontinuance.

“I just got off the phone with Bed Bath and Beyond. They’re dropping My Pillow. Just got off the phone not five minutes ago. Kohl’s, all these different places,” Lindell told Right Side Broadcasting Network.

Kohl’s and Bed Bath & Beyond didn’t immediately respond to inquiries.

Lindell said the actions came after groups like Sleeping Giant push companies to stop doing business with him.

“It’s not their fault that they’re scared because they don’t realize these are fake people that are on, they’re going ‘we’re going to boycott your store if you don’t drop My Pillow.'” People should go into the stores and say they support My Pillow, he added............To Read More....

Trump Campaign Adviser Says DC Studio Refused Him Because He’s on a ‘List’

By Isabel van Brugen January 12, 2021

Jason Miller, a Trump campaign adviser, on Monday said that he was barred from entering a Washington, D.C.-based studio for an interview with Fox Business’s Charles Payne, as he has been put on a “list.”

“Wow – the anti-Trump censorship/deplatforming is out of control,” he wrote on Twitter. “Just went to the LiveShots studio in DC to join @cvpayne on @FoxBusiness, and the LiveShots employees told me I’m not allowed to use their studios because ‘I’m on a list.’”

Miller said that when he asked what sort of list he’s on, and why the studio accepted the booking in the first place, he was told by Liveshots D.C. employees that the list was for “health reasons.”........To Read More.....

•  White House Showcases List of Trump Presidency Accomplishments

Democrats Outsource Political Repression to Corporate Monopolies

Those rights that the government can’t take from you, Google, Amazon, and Facebook will.

Mon Jan 18, 2021 Daniel Greenfield 11

The repression will be televised. It will go better with Coke, it will promise to clear up your bad breath and make your toilet shine. It will be in the cloud, it will be digitized and monetized.

It will have a trademark, a brand, and it will be outsourced to the private sector.

Democrats love public-private partnerships and they outsourced political repression to the private sector. The Constitution has inconvenient things to say about freedom of speech and so the Democrat government of elected and unelected officials outsourced the problem of censoring and suppressing speech to the handful of Big Tech monopolies of the internet.

That same old document written by old white dead men, not to mention centuries of jurisprudence and tradition, prevents the government from kicking down your door in the middle of the night for wrongthink. But nothing keeps corporations from firing you for wrongthink, for being related to someone who committed wrongthink, or for insufficient political correctness.

The public-private partnership between big government and big monopolies is based on Democrats and corporations doing the dirty work of repressing each other’s opponents..........To Read More.....

•  White House Showcases List of Trump Presidency Accomplishments

Dems Are Now Trying To Blacklist Trump Supporters

 Written by Magnus McCoy - January 13, 2021

This is just another example of just how divided we are as a nation. AOC and some of her ilk are taking their hate to the next level. They have decided that any GOP member that voted against certifying Biden as the president should be blackballed. They intend to go out of their way to block anything they put forward. Because that's just how petty they have decided to be.

"House Democrats are looking for some payback.

Democrats eager to make their GOP colleagues pay for challenging President-elect Joe Biden’s 2020 election win after deadly riots in the Capitol are considering blackballing some of those dissenters by keeping their names off any legislation that has a chance of becoming law.

Multiple Democrats raised the idea Monday that House chairs could keep any legislation co-sponsored by anti-certification Republicans from seeing the light of day. They are also discussing removing the names of those Republicans from bill re-introductions, the latest instance of how pro-Trump Republicans are facing a reckoning in Washington.........To Reads More....

This Is How Conservatives Get Erased From the Internet

And this is how we can change it. 

Wed Jan 13, 2021 Daniel Greenfield 413

Two companies, Google and Apple, each control about half of the smartphone market. So when the two companies made a move against Parler, the conservative social media alternative, it effectively erased its app from existence. Joining the party was a third member of the FAANG Big Tech consortium, Amazon, which deplatformed Parler from Amazon Web Services.

AWS controls a third of the cloud marketplace. Microsoft and Google are in 2nd and 3rd place.

Blocking an app doesn’t permanently kill a social networking service, though it places it at a structural disadvantage, but Apple and Google can flag sites as unsafe through their browsers.

Google’s Chrome commands 45% of the browser market in America while Apple’s Safari has a little under 40%. While browser flags can be currently bypassed, it would add a further structural disadvantage that would make people less likely to use the service, and there’s nothing stopping Apple and Google from permanently blocking access to any conservative site.

There are other browsers, but Google and Apple could kick any browser off their app stores that doesn’t comply with a blocklist of ‘unsafe’ sites, further narrowing the potential browser options.

With desktops and laptops, Microsoft and Apple can block access to sites at the operating system level by using their built-in antivirus software. That can also be turned off. For now.

Google controls over 80% of search traffic. Facebook controls some 80% of social media. Being delisted and deplatformed by them can be all but fatal to any site trying to attract new users.

Some conservatives take refuge in the illusion of alternatives from smaller companies, but in the oligarchy, smaller companies usually directly or indirectly rely on services from Big Tech..............To Read More.....

The Totalitarian Left Moves to Silence All Dissent

January 16, 2021 By Pamela Geller

 In an article that was picked up by the Mercury News, Ethan Baron of the Bay Area News Group wrote Tuesday that “A week after false claims of a stolen U.S. presidential election drove a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Twitter is allowing a far-right supporter of President Donald Trump to claim the election was stolen.” Baron’s intention was clear: he wants Twitter to ban me, as it banned Trump, for telling truths they want buried. His article shows how monstrous and totalitarian the left really is: leftists think they can publicly call for the censuring and banning of someone whose views they hate, and just like that, you disappear.

The left and its propaganda arm, the establishment media, are now working hard to make it illegal, and get you banned from social media, to state the obvious fact that the election was stolen. The Democrats are seeking to criminalize and penalize anyone who says theelection was stolen. Their “insurrection” hoax, and impeachment of the president without due process or giving him the chance to defend himself, is designed to shut down any and all talk of their infamous election fraud. This is not the behavior of people who know they won fair and square and are watching their opponents have a tantrum about it. This is the action of the guilty.

That said, the election was stolen. The mountains of evidence of election fraud were never examined in any court, and then we were told that there was no evidence at all, or if there was any, it had already been dismissed in court challenges. The court cases were all dismissed on technicalities and procedural issues, not because there was no evidence of voter fraud. That evidence has still not been examined............To Read More.....

Amazon Goes Mad James V. DeLong By nixing Parler, Amazon hss exposed itself to an impressive spectrum of risks, both legal and business. More

 

The Left closes in

January 13, 2021 By Eric Utter

It happened in a hurry. The Left is, apparently, attempting to impose the complete destruction of First Amendment rights of roughly half of America’s citizens. In cases large and small, massive multinational corporations with no particular allegiance to the United States are colluding with members of the media and Democratic politicians to permanently silence dissent and cement their own power.

To wit: LeeAnn Miller founded PatrioticMe, an online retailer that sells patriotic clothing items, in September of last year. The business advertised on Facebook and was quite successful from the outset. She donates a portion of every sale to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, a charity founded to honor the sacrifice of New York City firefighter Stephen Siller, who gave his life to save others as a first responder on Sept. 11, 2001. But, on Nov. 4, 2020, the day after the presidential election, she received an email from the Facebook Ads Team informing her that her advertisements did not comply with Facebook's advertising policies or other standards. The subject line of the email stated: "Ad Account Disabled for Policy Violation.” She was stunned. 

She assumed the advertisements were disabled in error, so she immediately contacted Facebook and requested a review of her account. She received a second email saying virtually the same thing. After two more requests for a review or explanation, the Facebook Ads Team sent Miller a final notice on Nov. 24 telling her that her restricted account would not be re-enabled. Miller says that she was never able to speak with a live human being. Facebook’s decision has resulted in PatrioticMe losing 94% of its traffic. She believes her ad account was disabled simply because of her products’ patriotic message.............

Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank and New York-based Signature Bank have both reportedly cut ties with President Trump and will no longer do business with him............... 

Republican former Congressman Ron Paul was locked out of his Facebook account by the social media giant on Monday, after he dared to share a column blasting Big Tech.......To Read More.......