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Guest post: A validation of violence as a form of political expression

Nov 20th, 2023 8:56 am | By

Originally a comment by Bruce Gorton on Does the left hate women?

Considering we’re talking radical left, I think a lot of it has to do with Antifa, or the philosophy behind Antifa.

Antifa is fundamentally, as an idea, a validation of violence as a form of political expression, as a tactic in political debate.

Now this strain of thought predates Antifa as a formalized idea on the radical left, but it was with Antifa that it formed enough coherency to be properly identified.

So when Islamists launch terror attacks in Western nations – think the Charlie Hebdo massacre for example – that is seen as not just a political statement, but a valid one. The conversation is always shifted … Read the rest



And other bullies

Nov 20th, 2023 8:37 am | By
And other bullies

In other words a very small number.

We’re supposed to think “all the”=a very large number.

It doesn’t.… Read the rest



Musk’s sullen yawp

Nov 20th, 2023 4:45 am | By

Popehat on Musk and free speech and how confused people are about what free speech even is:

Elon Musk genuinely feels that advertisers are a threat to free speech. Why? Because many advertisers fled X after Musk eagerly endorsed a bigot’s articulation of anti-Semitic theories, including that Jews promote hatred of whites and that Jews are importing “hordes of minorities.” Unsurprisingly, many companies aren’t cool with that. That’s a mix of corporate leadership thinking that such bigotry is bad business and thinking that it’s immoral.

Private companies have a First Amendment right to make such a decision. They have the right to express their values — and choose their marketing strategy — by deciding what kind of media content to

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Not even the full list

Nov 19th, 2023 5:24 pm | By
Not even the full list

Pliny on the persecuted:

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Too many men showed up threatening violence

Nov 19th, 2023 3:31 pm | By

Holy shit.

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Does the left hate women?

Nov 19th, 2023 12:34 pm | By

Jerry Coyne notes that blind spot on the putative left:

The decision of LGBTQ people and feminists to support Muslim societies—societies where they’d never want to live, for many of them would be killed because of their sexual orientation—is an example of MacPherson’s Law, confected by one of our readers. According to Diana, if progressives must choose between conflicting causes to support, and one of them is women’s rights, the women’s rights lose. (By “causes”, I mean “supporting a group deemed to be oppressed.”) I’ll add a corollary: if progressives have to choose between two conflicting causes, and one of them is LGBTQ rights, those rights also lose.

Diana is not wrong. Another label for it could be The … Read the rest



No speak for you

Nov 19th, 2023 11:07 am | By

How progressive.

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Get out

Nov 19th, 2023 10:57 am | By

Man preens about ruining another sport for women.

Harriet Haynes has broken her silence after winning a national pool tournament by default after her opponent walked out in protest against having to face transgender players, with the champion claiming ‘bigotry is alive and well’.

Lynne Pinches conceded the final of the Ladies Champion of Champions national pool tournament at the weekend without playing a single frame, refusing to face her transgender opponent Haynes.

Her male opponent.

Pinches revealed after the match – her fourth final in her pool career – that her decision to walk out was made in the aid of ‘fairness’ in the sport, protesting against the fact that natal females can be drawn against transgender players. 

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Shackled

Nov 19th, 2023 10:32 am | By

Time to ditch the TQ (way past time in fact).

As rising numbers of old-fashioned LGBs see it, the “T” — for transgender — and “Q” for queer, don’t necessarily have much in common with gays and lesbians. 

Not so much “old-fashioned” as still able to tell the differences between things that are not the same.

For these ideological reformists, the LGBTQ mash-up and community-wide obsession with trans issues is sowing confusion and chaos within politics and popular culture — eroding much of the progress sexual minorities have fought to achieve.

Well, that, but also it’s a pack of lies enforced by relentless bullying.

“We feel shackled into this ‘umbrella term’ by organizations that are supposed to serve us but

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Fewer but better Greens

Nov 19th, 2023 9:40 am | By

The purification continues.

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Guest post: Like some sort of activist auto-immune disorder

Nov 18th, 2023 5:22 pm | By

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on The spectre.

Affirmation is a powerful psychological tool, but like all tools (nuclear power or nuclear bombs) it needs to be applied with rigour and care for the outcome.

Interesting insight. Thank you for sharing this.

We seem to be dealing with the “nuclear bomb” version of this psychological tool. These desperate people are being told that affirmation needs to be paired with drastic body modification. The self-defeating, self destructive internal voice is being catered to and appeased, not talked off the ledge. The social contagion aspect turns the phenomenon into a patient driven one, with sufferers demanding the “true path” to what they’ve been told will make them better. … Read the rest



Daddy had to push too

Nov 18th, 2023 4:33 pm | By

Take your diversity assessment and shove it up whatever gender-questionng orifice you have handy.

A maternity hospital received a low grade on a diversity assessment because staff only use the term “mother” when discussing maternity leave, The Telegraph can disclose.

The Cambridge University Hospital Trust, which manages a maternity hospital called the Rosie, lost points because staff use the term “mother” when referring to the policies it had in place regarding paid leave, instead of broadening it to include gender-neutral alternatives.

Are they still calling it a maternity hospital? Shouldn’t that be parental hospital? Or perhaps uterus-haver hospital? Eggy-patient hospital?

The report was carried out by the NHS’ “Rainbow Badge” scheme, which assesses hospitals based on how they treat LGBT

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Insurrection, big deal

Nov 18th, 2023 11:11 am | By

Seems bizarre.

 A Colorado judge on Friday allowed Donald Trump to remain on the ballot in the state’s election next year, but found that he “engaged in insurrection” by sparking the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.

He did the thing that should disqualify him but he gets to stay anyway.

The ruling from Judge Sarah Wallace, which is almost certain to be appealed, rejects a bid by a group of Colorado voters to disqualify Trump under a rarely used amendment to the U.S. Constitution that bars officials who have engaged in “insurrection” from holding federal office.

I’m betting the reason the amendment is rarely used is that insurrection doesn’t happen all that … Read the rest



The spectre

Nov 18th, 2023 10:20 am | By

At the Critic an anonymous psychiatrist writes:

When a child identifies as trans, the spectre of suicide is frequently raised by campaigners — sometimes in a highly manipulative and unethical form. A talk by philosopher Kathleen Stock at the Oxford Union in May was interrupted by an activist glueing her hands to the floor. She wore a T-shirt stating, “No more dead trans kids”. Parents are told that unless they immediately “socially transition” their child — i.e., refer to them as members of the opposite sex, and present them as such to everyone else — their child is highly likely to self-harm.

Perhaps the most egregious form this claim takes is that unless a child is swiftly medicalised, first

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Red pilling the great replacement

Nov 18th, 2023 8:51 am | By

Let’s read that article that Media Matters has pinned on Twitter:

Elon Musk praises antisemitic replacement theory that motivated a mass shooting as “the actual truth”

Ever in search of a new low, Elon Musk managed to find one on November 15 when he declared on X (formerly known as Twitter) that a paid X Premium (previously Twitter Blue) user’s antisemitic conspiracy theory attacking Jewish people was the “actual truth.”

We’ve already seen the tweet in question, and had a heated conversation over it. Jews pushing hatred against whites blah blah, Musk high-fiving.

The conspiracy theory, that Jewish populations are pushing “hatred against whites” and supporting “hordes of minorities” coming into the country, is the same one that motivated the

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The last few days

Nov 18th, 2023 8:38 am | By

Dropping in on Media Matters this morning…

November 16:

November 16 or 17:

November 17:

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The actual

Nov 18th, 2023 8:09 am | By

Musk promises to go thermonuclear.

Elon Musk has said he will be filing a “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters and others, after major US companies paused their adverts on his social media site over concerns about antisemitism.

The media watchdog Media Matters said earlier this week that it found corporate advertisements by IBM, Apple, Oracle and Comcast’s Xfinity were being placed alongside antisemitic content, including that praising Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.

The result was a lot of big advertisers leaving Musk’s social media site.

“The split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company,” Musk said in a

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Guest post: But they won’t

Nov 17th, 2023 5:19 pm | By

Originally a comment by Arcadia on But they’re not.

we can’t have that debate, because there’s a genuine conversation to be had about the rights of transgender people and the protection of safe spaces and hard-fought rights for women.

Yeah. We could have that debate, if trans organisations would ever allow it (and to date they won’t, escalating to barricading, deplatforming, threatening and actual violence when it’s been tried).

But they won’t. And they won’t because once it’s suggested by them that the right of a woman to get changed without seeing a stranger’s dick ought to be *balanced* with the “right” of an adult to show his dick to an unwilling woman and children, most people wonder what … Read the rest



Even worse

Nov 17th, 2023 3:28 pm | By

Debbie Cameron always nails it.

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Attempted damage control

Nov 17th, 2023 11:43 am | By

Funny, it seems I’m not the only credulous fool who thinks Musk’s horrible tweets are horrible.

Joe Biden has excoriated Elon Musk’s “abhorrent” tweets two days after the X owner posted his full-throated agreement with an antisemitic post.

Musk sparked backlash with his own tweets responding to a user who accused Jewish people of “hating white people” and showing indifference to antisemitism. “You have said the actual truth,” Musk tweeted in reply. X users, including many in the tech industry, lambasted the posts, though other users agreed with Musk and said they were gleefully watching him sink into their hateful worldview.

Well I doubt they said that exactly. I doubt they said “I am/we are gleefully watching him … Read the rest