Free Speech Battles | California DEI Totalitarianism

Just as an aside, Leftists and Democrats are the ones pushing “institutional racism,” as the below notes. Also note, I use “totalitarianism” in the sense of “total thought.” Which is a forced “homogenization” of thought… or, state instituted/forced “total thought.”

UPDATED VIDEO

This is an interview by Lex Fridman of Greg Lukianoff of F.I.R.E. (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression). The entire interview, “Greg Lukianoff: Cancel Culture, Deplatforming, Censorship & Free Speech | Lex Fridman Podcast #397,” can be seen HERE (I grab from around the 1:10:50 mark). There are a few universities/colleges involved in legal action in California, but The Renegade Institute for Liberty at Bakersfield College is one this is made for.

DEI stands for “diversity, equity, and inclusion” — all of which sounds fine, right? But materials put out by the state of California show that in this case, DEI translates to highly contested and controversial views. The state’s definitions say that the idea of “color blindness” “perpetuates… racial inequities,” and even the idea of “merit,” is “embedded in the ideology of Whiteness” and “upholds race-based structural inequality.” FIRE has filed a lawsuit on behalf of six California community college professors to halt new, systemwide regulations forcing professors to espouse and teach these politicized conceptions of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The regulations are now in effect in the State Center Community College District, and FIRE’s clients have already been forced to change their syllabi and teaching materials, lest they face repercussions. (More info on the lawsuit @FIRE)

Here is an article from THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE that is worth reading in it’s entirety. It is titled: “First Amendment lawsuits challenge state’s DEI rules for community colleges” If you encounter a paywall, grab the URL from the link and put it into this “hopper: REMOVE PAYWALL.

California’s new community college rules sound simple enough: As of this year, all instructors must teach in a way that is culturally inclusive and must prove during employee evaluations that they respect and acknowledge students and colleagues of diverse backgrounds.

But what if an instructor holds so-called color-blind [more on this idea after article excerpt] views and prefers to ignore people’s race, ethnicity, gender or other physical and cultural characteristics as a personal philosophy? Or if an instructor disagrees entirely with the “anti-racism” and “diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility lens” that state’s college officials now require?

Seven instructors from four community colleges in the Central Valley are now testing that cultural collision on constitutional grounds, saying their views could get them fired under the new rules. With the backing of national advocacy groups, the instructors are suing state and local college officials in federal court to have the regulations tossed.

The suits echo another federal lawsuit, filed in May against the University of California, in which a psychology professor hoping to work at UC Santa Cruz ran up against a UC requirement that applicants submit a statement supporting “diversity, equity and inclusion.” The applicant likened it to a “modern-day loyalty oath” of the kind discredited in the 1950s, when those who wouldn’t sign might be labeled communist subversives.

[….]

Another group, the Institute for Free Speech, filed a similar lawsuit on July 6 on behalf of Daymon Johnson, a history instructor at Bakersfield College in Kern County.

“Almost everything Professor Johnson teaches violates the new DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility) requirements — not just by failing to advance the DEIA and anti-racist ideologies, but also by criticizing them,” the suit says, noting that compliance with the new rules would violate the instructor’s conscience and force him to surrender his academic freedom.

SEE MORE AT THE INSTITUTE FOR FREE SPEECH’S BLOG:

RPT is asking people to donate HERE.

In his U.S. History class this fall, for example, Johnson plans to have students read two books claiming to debunk the historian Howard Zinn’s work, which reveals less flattering versions of the American story, and the well-known 1619 Project, which digs deeply into the foundations of slavery.

His lawsuit contains a long list of things that the instructor “does not wish” to do. These include referring to transgender students by their preferred pronouns, acknowledging that social identities are diverse, and demonstrating “DEI and anti-racism practices” because he “rejects and even finds (them) abhorrent.”

Johnson is also a leader of the Renegade Institute for Liberty, a Bakersfield College group that opposes “political and ideological tyranny.” Its acronym is RIFL.

The suit claims that Johnson is already in the crosshairs of the college administration for his views and quotes a Kern college district trustee saying, in reference to employees holding anti-DEIA views: “They’re in that 5% that we have to continue to cull. Got them in my livestock operation and that’s why we put a rope on some of them and take them to the slaughterhouse.”

The Kern trustees did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

The suit says that Bakersfield College already fired another instructor, who was Johnson’s predecessor at RIFL, and calls him “the first cullee.”

According to the suit, the person who oversaw the firing was the Kern district’s former chancellor, Sonya Christian, who has just become the chancellor of the California community colleges. With 116 schools and more than 2 million students enrolling each year, it’s the nation’s largest higher education system.  

On Friday afternoon, state Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office filed a response to Johnson’s suit on behalf of Christian, arguing that the instructor has not only failed to show that he’s been harmed by the rules, but because of that, he also lacks standing to complain about them. 

The response defends the diversity regulations and says the rules “do not restrict the free speech of any employee,” nor do they infringe on anyone’s academic freedom, “including Johnson’s.”

The system’s Board of Governors has the right to establish policies that “reflect its ideals and principles regarding diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility,” the state argues. 

A spokesperson for Christian said the college system has not yet responded in court to the more recent lawsuit and would not comment on it.  

The new regulations require all 73 college districts to develop policies for evaluating employee performance and tenure eligibility in light of their “DEIA competencies.”

The rules follow a series of other DEIA guidance and messages from the chancellor’s office in recent years, and say that to ensure academic success, “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) and anti-racism remain at the heart of our work.”

The college system also posts a glossary of DEIA terms, which defines color blindness as a “racial ideology” that ignores “a large part of one’s identity and lived experience” and therefore “perpetuates existing racial inequities.”….

COLOR BLIND

Dennis Prager discusses a call about a gentleman disagreeing with his statement that he doesn’t see color, and others shouldn’t as well. After the discussion of the previous call, I include the call as well as the lead up to it.

MORE!

  • LINK to a Facebook video: Dennis Reacts: “I See No Color” Is Racist?” (FACEBOOK)

The Issue Is Values, Not Systemic Racism

Do you let your race, gender, or orientation define you? If you are on the left, everything is perceived through the lens of identity politics. Systemic racism is not the real issue plaguing America—it is our opposing values system. Dennis Prager offers some refreshing insight into how to heal our broken nation.

Should We Be Colorblind?

Nothing reveals the moral confusion of our time more than those who label the term “colorblind” racist. Who would want to see themselves in terms of their skin color? And what does a person’s skin color really say about who they are — their likes, dislikes, values, and so on?

Prager Notes The Left’s Proclivity Towards Racism

A girl is legally kidnapped in Santa Clarita by state authorities. The Left’s dogged emphasis on race, class, gender is destroying families, keeping them in poverty, and utterly failing our country’s motto, “out of many, one.” The Left has dumped out the melting pot and keeps us as divided as ever. This story is maddening!

Here is the what the main battle is over: “A battle over custody of a little girl who is 1/64th Choctaw has been in and out of the courts for three years now, and returns on Friday with a new appeal hearing” (ABC-7).

  • “Is it one drop of blood that triggers all these extraordinary rights?” — Justice Roberts

Keep in mind the racial science of NAZI Germany were concerned with a 1/16th racial mix… here we see the racial sciences of the Choctaw Nation and the State of California concerned over a 1/64th portion of heritage. Sick! Racist! Leftism!

  • In 1911, Arkansas passed Act 320 (House Bill 79), also known as the “one-drop rule.” This law had two goals: it made interracial “cohabitation” a felony, and it defined as “Negro” anyone “who has…any negro blood whatever,” thus relegating to second-class citizenship anyone accused of having any African ancestry. Although the law had features unique to Arkansas, it largely reflected nationwide trends. (source)


ONE DROP RULE


More from the LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS Opinion Page:

Five hundred years ago, the Incas sacrificed children.

They removed children as young as six from their families, transported them with great ceremony to a mountain location, and left them to die of exposure.

Did they have the moral right to do it?

Some people think so. “To their credit,” wrote Kim MacQuarrie, an Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker, anthropologist and author, “the Incas did their best to ensure the survival of their people and empire by paying close attention to nature and doing their best to use every means at their disposal, including human sacrifice, to gain control over it.”

There’s something seriously wrong with any kind of reasoning that places human sacrifice in the category of “doing their best.”

SEE MY: “Mayan, Incan and Aztec “Terrorism

And there is something seriously wrong with what happened in Santa Clarita this week to a 6-year-old girl named Lexi and the foster family that has cared for her since she was 2.

Rusty and Summer Page tried for years to adopt Lexi but were blocked from doing so. The reason? The little girl has a tiny bit of Choctaw ancestry — just 1.5 percent — and under federal law the Choctaw Nation can decide her fate. The tribal authorities decided that Lexi will live in Utah with distant relatives. They issued this statement:

“The Choctaw Nation desires the best for this Choctaw child. The tribe’s values of faith, family and culture are what makes our tribal identity so important to us. Therefore we will continue to work to maintain these values and work toward the long-term best interest of this child.”

This is not human sacrifice, but it is closely related. It is collectivism, the opposite of individual rights.

Collectivism holds that an individual’s life belongs not to the individual, but to the group in which the individual is a member. Where other children would have the right to have a parent or guardian make decisions for them, Lexi’s future has been decided by group leaders seeking to preserve “tribal identity.”

On Monday, in a most disturbing scene, the 6-year-old was pulled weeping and frightened from the arms of her foster father on the driveway of the only stable home she has ever known.

Lexi is not the only child to be victimized by the enforcement of a federal law that, ironically, was intended to prevent children from being removed from their families.

In Arizona, a foster family’s adoption of a baby girl, who was placed with them at birth, is being blocked by the Gila River Indian Community, and the Navajo Nation is standing in the way of foster parents seeking to adopt a 5-year-old boy who has lived with them for four years.

The Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank based in Phoenix, has filed a lawsuit on behalf of these children and “others similarly situated” over this “separate and unequal treatment.”

The lawsuit argues that children of Native American ancestry are being unfairly denied their civil rights: “Alone among American children, their adoption and foster care placements are determined not in accord with their best interests but by their ethnicity, as a result of a well-intentioned but profoundly flawed and unconstitutional federal law, the Indian Child Welfare Act.”

The Indian Child Welfare Act was passed in 1978 in reaction to another government program, the Indian Adoption Project, which began in 1958 and continued until 1967.

The Indian Adoption Project was the result of an agreement between the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Child Welfare League of America. It encouraged the removal of Indian children from their families on reservations so they could be adopted and “assimilate” into “mainstream society.” By the 1970s, between 25 and 35 percent of all Indian children nationwide had been removed from their homes, and 90 percent had been adopted by white families.

Outrage over the Indian Adoption Project led to the Indian Child Welfare Act. It requires social workers to make an extra effort to avoid removing Indian children from troubled homes, a greater effort than they would make for non-Indian children. When foster care or adoption becomes necessary, the law requires an active effort to place the child with an Indian family.

The Goldwater Institute says these requirements are discriminatory and harmful, making it harder to protect Indian children from abuse and neglect, and forcing longer waits for permanent homes.

The foster care system has many challenges and many heartbreaking stories. We don’t need laws that cause more pain. The Indian Child Welfare Act should go. Give the kids a break.

Susan Shelley is a San Fernando Valley author, a former television associate producer and twice a Republican candidate for the California Assembly.

The parents of a six-year-old girl taken from her family due to her Native American heritage speak out in a statement after officials from the Los Angeles County Department of Child and Family Services took their daughter, Lexi, away. Read more at SCV-NEWS.

George Will gets it right over at WA-PO:

Opinion | The Brutal Racial Politics Of The Indian Child Welfare Act

Lexi lived four of her first six years with a non-Native American California foster family, but because she is 1/64th Choctaw, tribal officials got her taken from the Californians and sent to live in Utah with a distant relative. On Friday, the Supreme Court will consider whether to hear a challenge to the law that made this possible — the Indian Child Welfare Act, which endangers many young Native Americans. It also is a repudiation of the nation’s premise that rights are inherent in individuals, not groups.

In 1978, before “Native Americans” became the preferred designation for Indians, but when racial “identity” was beginning to become the toxic political concept it now is, Congress enhanced tribal rights. This violated, among other principles, those of federalism: Congress thereby reduced the right of states to enforce laws on child welfare. And it plunged government deeper into making distinctions solely on the basis of biological descent.

The ICWA, an early bow toward multiculturalism, buttressed tribal identities by strengthening tribal rights. For example, tribes can partially nullify states’ powers to intervene against tribal parents’ abuse endangering children. And the ICWA conferred rights on tribes, rights adjudicated in tribal courts, including the right to require Native American children be adopted by Native Americans.

Equal protection of the laws? Not under ICWA.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has asked, “Is it one drop of blood that triggers all these extraordinary rights?” Indeed, the primitive concept of racial “blood,” recast as DNA, triggers tribal rights and extinguishes a state’s right to protect many children’s rights. Sometimes with dire consequences.

In 2015, this column acquainted readers with Declan Stewart and Laurynn Whiteshield. Declan was 5 in 2007 when he was beaten to death by his mother’s live-in boyfriend. Oklahoma had removed him from his mother’s custody after he suffered a fractured skull and severe bruising between his testicles and rectum. But when the Cherokee Nation objected to his removal, Oklahoma, knowing that the ICWA favors tribal rights, relented. Beaten again, he died a month after returning to his mother.

From the age of 9 months until almost 3, Laurynn was in a North Dakota minister’s foster care. When the minister tried to adopt her, the Spirit Lake Sioux tribe invoked the ICWA, and Laurynn was sent to a reservation and the custody of her grandfather. Less than six weeks later she was dead, having been thrown down an embankment by the grandfather’s wife, who had a record of child abuse.

The ICWA requires that “Indian children” be placed with “Indian” foster families. Because the ICWA allows a child to be yanked from a non-Indian foster home — and from possible adoption — it discourages non-Native American adults from providing care, including early infant attachment, which is a foundation of healthy child development.

Born with fetal alcohol syndrome, Antonio Renova was 3 days old when he was taken from his biological parents, members of the Crow tribe, and put in foster care. Five years later, the biological parents, both on probation following felony convictions (the mother’s included child endangerment), obtained custody of Antonio through a Crow tribal court. He suffered beatings by his parents, who have been charged in his death.

Antonio was a casualty of the ICWA’s form of identity politics — the allocation of legal status and group entitlements based on biology. The ICWA has insinuated into law a “separate but equal” test regarding Native American children in jeopardy. It demotes “the best interests of the child” from the top priority; it makes a child’s relationship with a tribe supremely important.

The nation has abundant reasons to regret its mistreatment of Native Americans, and the ICWA was perhaps motivated by an impulse to show respect for Indigenous cultures. But the cost, in broken bodies and broken constitutional principles, has been exorbitant.

Today, the nation is reverting — in the name of “social justice” and “equity” understood as improved social outcomes for government-favored groups — to a retrograde emphasis on racial identities. So, the ICWA’s sacrifice of individual rights to group entitlements probably has a diminished power to shock. Come Friday, however, the Supreme Court should be shocked into hearing the arguments against the federal government usurpation, through the ICWA, of the states’ responsibility for protecting children in jeopardy, regardless of their biological ancestry.

More Ranting On The Left’s Fast Paced “Good Intentions”

(This was originally posted Jun 27, 2015 — I make a prediction herein [also HERE~n~ HERE])

I wanted to post some of my early thoughts [rant] on the decision, followed by more rantings:

Two yes, the number two, has now become an objective concept in law over and above millions of years of evolution (Natures Law), or God’s Law (Natural Law) honing or creating the ideal that is the “male-female” relation. Both of these ideas, Natures Law and natures God (from the Declaration), under-girded the philosophy of the movement that wrote the greatest document/contract in human history. [Take away that philosophy and you lose the document.]

The mission of the church in the West has just changed. Soon the number 2 will fall by the relativistic roadside to plural marriages. All these non-ideal familial structures (according to Nature or natures God) will erode the religious freedom the Founders set up.

But we have a generation that neither looks to history for guidance or to any religious/moral authority outside themselves.

This experiment will eventually fall into the edict of the French (Jacobin) idea of equality in outcomeAnd to be clear, the guillotine soon followed. Tyranny never follows far behind forced outcomes.

The priority of the male-female relationship is just a larger piece to the puzzle called “deconstructionism.”

(RPT)

My other thoughts for here is something I have said for quite a while now:

“Leftism” eats itself 

It always has. We have seen socialist groups fight for their agenda to be paramount (thinking of Russian and German historical hegemony that led to many deaths to accomplish this goal… before the end result of the power structure and well-known leaders took power — which caused even more deaths — Pol Pot, Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, just to name a few well known 20th century Lefties). To Wit,

Because of the flag issue, already there is talk of the Jefferson Memorial (the founder of the party running around from activist issue-to-issue ~ they do this because they replace the God shaped vacuum with politics)… banning Gone with the Wind (even though a black woman [the first time in our history] won “Best Supporting Actress)… etc.

The hubris of the left can be seen as well in thinking that they [politicians] can control weather (the sun) by legislation. Or changing gender by the stroke of a pen. Pride predates the fall.

In the “rights” area I always point out that these “special rights” [not equal rights] are shown in conflict. Here is one example theorized by Dale Berryhill:

  • “If homosexuality is really genetic, we may soon be able to tell if a fetus is predisposed to homosexuality, in which case many parents might choose to abort it. Will gay rights activists continue to support abortion rights if this occurs?”

Another example comes from an activist site:

  • “The gay rights movement has won rights and recognition that largely serve the interests of white, wealthy cisgender* gay men to the detriment of poor queers and queer people of color, and to the detriment of racial and economic justice more generally.” (*…related types of gender identity perceptions, where individuals’ experiences of their own gender agree with the sex they were assigned at birth.)

So you can see when you move from equal under the law to special interest groups getting special protections, these camps begin to battle each-other. They “eat” each-other.

This is how I see it.

On one level it shows a proclivity to self destruct when you remove God from the equation.

The God that includes 100% justice, 100% love, 100% grace, 100% hatred for sin, etc. (not emphasizing parts of God one agrees with or on and demphasizing or muting aspects of God one disagrees with). You know, the Judeo-Christian concept of God, the bedrock to our Republic.

  • GK Chesterton said, “When a man ceases to believe in God he does not believe in nothing, he believes almost in anything.”

So I like it because the chaos of the secular world shows the Christian-theistic worldview works. I also like it because this dysmorphism exists primarily on the left of the political spectrum ~ which makes sense because they are a) more secular, and when religious they b) have more of a proclivity to emphasize one aspect of God over another in their theology (pick-and-choose the God they serve).

So I like it because it shows that while the GOP is also chaotic to some extent, it works better when its ideals are leaned on (trade-offs). (The Utopian ideal of the lefts base do not believe in trade-offs.)

(RPT PREDICTION) ALL THAT BEING SAID there is a dangerous aspect to this. As the left eats itself, they have historically looked for scape-goats. Jews and Christians are typically the fall-guy… especially in the 20th and 21st Century. More violence will follow.

The left “KNOWS” its goals are well meaning, and so find acknowledgment that they are true and society “NEEDS” them ~ again, based on the “well meaningfulness.”

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. Their very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be ‘cured’ against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals. But to be punished, however severley, because we have deserved it, because ‘ought to have known better,’ is to be treated as a human persons in God’s image.”  

C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2002), 292 (Full text).

So, in the West as these “well-meaning” ideals works themselves out, expect more legal, cultural, and violent expression against those who hold to a historical, conserving theology and expressing this in public life.

This is the downside, and as RJ Rummel pointed out in his fourth book in his series, “Death by Government,” that as democracies become more undemocratic, policies begin that cause more death to its own citizens. Of course this is not an immediate happenstance, but legal and jail-time pre-date these outcomes. For instance, the next move will be gay-couples demanding to be married in churches and bringing those cases to the courts.

I will end this rant with a quote from a man who knows personally about this “secularization”

“More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’ Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; [and] if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.'”

Quoted in Ericson, Edward E. Jr. and Daniel J. Mahoney, The Solzhenitsyn Reader: New and Essential Writings 1947-2005. Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2006, page 577.

Reconstruction Retarded via Segregationists (Little Has Changed)

My response to this short video follows — with many links. I do not mean to counter the below but to merely add to it’s content our current malaise.

VIDEO DESCRIPTION:

After the Civil War, the Reconstruction era brought about hope and change in the form of citizenship and equality in America. Black men were given the right to vote, and in 1870, Hiram Revels became the first African American in the U.S. Congress when he was elected to represent Mississippi in the Senate. What followed included more than 2,000 Black office holders serving at every level of America’s political system.

Sadly, this progress was short-lived.

Black men were denied access to the ballot box and the rights they were granted at the start of the Reconstruction period slowly diminished. In result, a Black presence in Congress was completely eradicated by 1901, and it would take a full generation for it to be restored. In this episode of Black History in Two Minutes or So, we’ll discuss the African-American achievements in the political system that were systematically overturned.

Lesson. Stop voting for segregationistsotherwise known still to this day as Democrats. Who want to segregate housing to ethnicity on campuses. Who want to segregate which speech is allowed and which is not. Who want to segregate graduations, neighborhoods, etc. Even Don Lemon just said this to Vivek Ramaswamy: “when you are in black skin and you live in this country then you can disagree with me.” I was literally the only white kid in my neighborhood in Detroit, the Jefferson/Chalmers area. And? I was routinely chased, beaten up by groups of kids, I ran a lot, etc…. all because of “white skin and you live in this country” [to tweak Lemon] — do I have a more truthful voice? Or does truth reside in someone’s educated opinion more strongly? No matter his race. Truth exists outside my experience, I have to connect with it rather than making truth conform to me and my ideas of it. Which is why I say, quit voting for segregationists who want to curb the rights of the GOP rightly clarified in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. (All while the Left emboldens a new slavery.)

Heck, even mathematics is now considered racist in some school districts. Has this position been reached by “conservative” or by “leftists“? Is intersectionality causing unity or division?

(Professor Sommers’ full video is HERE)

You have to decide and vote well on it. A new Civil War is brewing over those that want to divide, segregate, and stop freedom of thought/speech. (Even reparations is divisive.) And those that want freedom to enjoy the liberties of 1870 and beyond, derailed by Democrats. Found as searching for additions to my “NRA and Black History (Don Lemon Fact-Checked)” The Civil War and Reconstruction are in the mix in that particular post.

Democratic Cannibalism (Intersectionality)

(JUMP TO THE UPDATE) Wow. You have to hear what this painfully-woke Disney writer has to say to white women. ? Ben Shapiro lights it up. [Feminism counts… but not if you are a white female]:

The Left’s view of Intersectionality, Multiculturalism, Equality, and the like does not create unity but causes division. This is why the Left will continue to — as they embrace these ideologies more — to cannibalize themselves. Which conservatives both predict and enjoy to some extent. This, HOWEVER may (may) cause them to blame outside forces and become more violent and irrational. Take for instance the example of a famous Leftist movement of the not-so-distant past, via INTELLECTUAL TAKEOUT:

I’ve long known of Stalin’s knack for erasing his enemies from Party photos once they had fallen out of his favor, but I recently stumbled on a wonderful visual example of it (see above).

The original photo (top left) was taken at the Fifteenth Leningrad Regional Party Conference in 1924 or 1925. It shows Nikolai Antipov (left), Joseph Stalin, Sergei Kirov (right), and Nikolai Shvernik (far right). Antiopov, who rose to become Deputy Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, was the first to fall out of Stalin’s favor. Shvernik vanished next. Readers can see he was airbrushed out of the photo, but Shvernik was lucky. He is the only person in the original photo to survive Stalin, whose enemies often had a penchant for dying unexpectedly. Which brings us to Kirov, a skilled politician and early Bolshevik leader who rose to become the First Secretary of the Communist Party’s powerful Central Committee. Kirov was shot in the neck in 1934 at the office at which he worked (the Smolny Institute). Though Stalin used Kirov’s death to clamp down on party dissidents, historians believe Kirov was killed on Stalin’s orders.

The images, which are now in the Public Domain, are instructive. They reveal at once the terror of the Soviet movement, the casual willingness of its leaders to employ deceit, and the importance the Bolsheviks placed on shaping narratives (regardless of truth).

The lesson? Beware those who employ deceit to shape a false version of history.

And in one sense when Amazon removes books from being sold, or, the Left labels people with words like these:

SEXIST, INTOLERANT, XENOPHOBIC, HOMOPHOBIC, ISLAMOPHOBIC, RACIST, BIGOTED (S.I.X.H.I.R.B.)

HILLARY’S version:

  • “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”

…they are in some sense removing them from history — or — being taken seriously in conversation. Who would want to discuss the health of the body politic with a racist? You see, the Left perceives certain features of reality based on an emotional “sixth sense” of some kind.  This “perceiving” is not necessarily based in reality — for instance, creating a narrative about a President that has nothing to do with reality, making him into an anti-Semite, racist, etc. More on the unity [/sarcasm] of intersectionality:

Leftism cause division… intersectionality, multiculturalism, etc., Democrats have no choice but division.

(Editor’s Note: This is called cannibalism… the Left sets up a non-reality [lots of parameters to be an authentic black, Christian, voter, non-racist, etc] that they themselves cannot live up to — but is great as a bludgeoning tool for those they disagree with.)

  • “Every single one who’s running probably has—this is a racist country, right? Every single one of them has something in their background that doesn’t look good for race,” (WASHINGTON FREE BEACON)

Like the MSM and others saying the same: WEASEL ZIPPERS

The first part of the audio is the point made by Democrats that people of color or woman are not allowed on the debate stage… but a rich white-man can buy his way on to the stage. The second half of the audio is a montage (linked above at WEASEL ZIPPERS) of Leftist media and commentators attacking Democrats (themselves) for being sexist and racist. Hilarious. What do you do when the other side starts fighting each-other? Stay out of it.

A recent example in the Left vs. Left war comes from a Bernie Sander’s rally (CAUTION: NUDITY):

Imagine being a far-leftist and still not ‘woke’ enough for the mob. That’s pretty much the creators of ‘Hamilton’ right now.


WALL of MOMS


This UPDATE is a story from LEGAL INSURRECTION (July 30th) and discusses what Representative Nadler was just praising… the “Wall of Moms.” (Emphasis added):

Last week, a “wall of moms” made a barrier around the rioters in Portland, OR, to protect them from law enforcement.

But now the rioters turned against the Wall of Moms because of allegations of “anti-Blackness.”

Nothin can satisfy these people.

The white leaders of Wall of Moms decided to step down from their roles and hand over the reins to “women of color.”

The new leaders “include Teressa Raiford, executive director of Don’t Shoot Portland, Demetria Hester and Danialle James.”

But now Don’t Shoot Portland wants people to stop supporting Wall of Moms…..

Hat-Tip to the video above and a commentator’s post on Andy Ngo’s Tweet which brought me to a HOT AIR post on the “Wall of Mom’s” — More from Andy:

GOP-USA has a decent story as well, noting: “Portland Wall of Moms, a group formed in recent weeks and quickly recognized as a staple of nightly downtown protests, was accused publicly Wednesday of “anti-Blackness” by leaders of an existing, Black-led community group.”


Multicultural Nightmares


A girl is legally kidnapped in Santa Clarita by state authorities. The Left’s dogged emphasis on race, class, gender is destroying families, keeping them in poverty, and utterly failing our country’s motto, “out of many, one.” The Left has dumped out the melting pot and keeps us as divided as ever. This story is maddening! Here is the story from our local paper:

Keep in mind the racial science of NAZI Germany were concerned with a 1/16th racial mix… here we see the racial sciences of the Choctaw Nation and the State of California concerned over a 1/64th portion of heritage. Sick! Racist! Leftism!

Star Wars Failing | A Female Thor (and More)

So between the failure of Solo, the divisiveness of The Last Jedi and the falling interest in Galaxy’s Edge, our good friends in the news media have concluded that Disney Star Wars isn’t doing too well. And I for one am shocked!

Great news! I was so pleased to learn that we’ll finally be getting what we all wanted in Marvel Phase 4 – a female Thor.

So I was excited to hear that talks between Sony and Marvel have broken down, and as a result there will be no more Spider-Man movies in the MCU. This can only be good news, right?

Star Wars: The Last Jedi, what a truly incredible trainwreck. Rian Johnson’s complete inability to craft anything even resembling meaningful (or coherent) plotline is truly remarkable to behold. Six months out from this farce, let’s take a closer look at everything that went wrong.


RED LETTER MEDIA

FLASHBACK


(RED LETTER MEDIA) Finally it’s here! The truly epic review/critique/analysis/film making educational video of the 1999 film “Star Wars: The Phantom Menace” There was so much to discuss with this film it had to be long so please don’t complain. If you think it’s too long then don’t watch it. In this opening segment I discuss the major flaw of The Phantom Menace which is the characters and the lack of connection with the audience.

Jordan Peterson Debunks White Privilege (No, Really)

Jordan Peterson debunks the Marxist lie of white privilege.

  • Since race isn’t the only way to play off malcontents against the core population, the shallow, adolescent concept of “white privilege” is giving way to “intersectionality.” But as Jordan Peterson points out, “The logical conclusion of intersectionality is individuality” — and that’s the last place cultural Marxists want to go…. (MOONBATTERY)

How Fake Subjects like Women Studies Invaded Academia

Sir Roger Vernon Scruton is an English philosopher and writer who specialises in aesthetics and political philosophy, particularly in the furtherance of traditionalist conservative views. In recent years he taught courses in Buckingham University, Oxford University and University of St. Andrews. In this clip he talks about fake subjects like women studies that invaded academia with their postmodernist views. (Full video lecture is HERE.)

Christina Hoff Sommers and Camille Paglia – Full Discussion

What would happen if Based Mom sat down with Based Goddess for an hour to discuss modern-day feminism? No need to speculate—here’s the full one-hour interview (with bonus content!) featuring Christina Hoff Sommers and Camille Paglia where they break down #Gamergate, intersectional feminism, the “male gaze”, and much, much more.

Two Recent Examples of Gay Fascism by Government

Here is a story sure to make parents… most parents… mad. But mad enough to stop voting Democrat? I doubt it. You are digging your own graves. Here is the continuation of the above video via The Blaze (this story is related to intersectional feminism):

The mother of a Tampa, Florida, seventh-grader is speaking out after finding an assignment given to her 12-year-old daughter and other students in Spanish class at Monroe Junior High.

The form asked, “How much privilege do you have? Circle the boxes that apply to you.”

The categories on the form listed “Race,” “Skin Color,” “Religion,” “Sex,” “Gender,” “Sexual Orientation” and “Disability.”

The options under gender included, “cisgendered,” “transgendered” or “genderqueer.”

Moonbattery has this story of a 4-year old being kicked out of preschool because the parents were questioning the pro-gay/transgender materials:

To construct utopia, thought criminals associated with resistance to the LGBT agenda must be dealt with severely — even if they are only 4 years old:

A Colorado preschool has booted a 4-year-old after her parent’s questioned the administration about its curriculum promoting homosexuality and transgenderism.

R.B Sinclair told the Denver Post that she wanted her daughter excused from classroom discussions on sex and gender, because she sees it as sex education.

She feels her daughter is too young for the discussions offered at the Montview Community Preschool & Kindergarten in Denver. …

Sinclair says one day her daughter came home worried that her dad might no longer like girls.

She met with the principal over concerns about the books being read in class, including ones that told the stories about same-sex couples and worms unsure about their gender.

School officials from the privately run parent cooperative explained the stories were part of the school’s anti-bias curriculum, and because the discussions are sprinkled through the day’s activities, they told her that opting out was not possible.

No doubt. Even math class probably features full-throated endorsements of the homosexual lifestyle — always assuming that schools still have math class….

Democrat Gay Fascism

The Resurgent ends their excellent article on this thus:

And for all those parents whose children are in the Colorado public schools, you have been warned. Your teachers have been trained to advance the same agenda in a classroom near you.

I suppose that is not surprising since we know have satanist coloring books available for students in Colorado, thanks to spineless school officials who don’t know the difference between the most influential book in the history of the world and a coloring book that denies the existence of God while encouraging kids to color inside the lines.

Where, oh where, have all the adults gone?