The ‘Systemic Racism’ Dodge
Harvey C. Mansfield
WSJ, Sept. 18, 2020Systemic racism, also known as institutional or structural racism, is a new phrase for a new situation. We live in a society where racism is not, and cannot be, openly professed. To do so not only is frowned upon but will get you into serious trouble, if not yet jail, in America. Yet even though this is impossible to miss and known to all, “systemic racism” supposedly persists. The phrase describes a society that is so little racist that no one can respectably advocate racism, yet so much racist that every part of it is soaked with racism. We live with the paradox of a racist society without racists.Systemic racism is unavowed and mostly unconscious, racist despite itself. Those who use the phrase, mostly whites, are consciously accusing their unconscious selves. To get a sense of what they mean, think of African-Americans as they are, freed of slavery and segregation but still somehow consigned to an inferior social position. Everywhere they look, they see black faces on show but white faces in charge. This is true even where they generally excel and surpass whites, as in sports and entertainment, and still more in business and academia, where they are fewer. White supremacy seems to be true in effect if not in intent. Look around and you will see it.It is strange to describe an unconscious effect as racism, for an ism is an opinion, a doctrine, not a mere condition. A doctrine has adherents who articulate it; it cannot be held unconsciously as can a prejudice. Racist doctrine says that blacks are a naturally and inherently inferior race. To criticize the character or behavior of blacks, individually or even on average, is not racism. Criticism implies that blacks are not living up to their potential, hence that they are capable of behaving well. Criticism implies an essential equality between critics and whomever they criticize. This is contrary to racism.
Racist doctrine is not really blame of an inferior race but implies a sort of excuse. If you are innately inferior, there’s nothing you can do about it—so no blame is reasonable. Nor, from the standpoint of racism, is it reasonable for the inferior race to resent being treated as inferior; that’s all it is entitled to. It’s better to resign oneself to one’s fate, whether one is superior or inferior. That is racism, and it is contrary to the American principle that all human beings are created equal. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Antiracism, Anti-Semitism, and the False Problem of Jewish Success
Daniel Friedman
Quillette, Oct. 25, 2020
On October 17th, the New York Times published an op-ed celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Million Man March that neglected to mention the anti-Semitic history of its organizer, Louis Farrakhan. In response, former Times editorial board member Bari Weiss tweeted that the institution had adopted “a worldview in which Jew hate does not count.” The author of the Times op-ed, Howard University professor Natalie Hopkinson, replied that “ppl who have become white”—that is, Jews like Weiss—“should not be lecturing Black ppl about oppression.”
Exposing and objecting to racial disparities became the purpose of the New York Times around August 2019, when executive editor Dean Baquet called a town hall meeting attended by the paper’s staff. He announced that, with the Mueller probe winding down, the paper needed to “regroup, and shift resources and emphasis” from Russiagate to the story of “race and class” and “what it means to be an American.” A few months later, the Times published “The 1619 Project” which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, and the paper’s editorial and ideological focus has been consistent ever since.
When Weiss left the Times in July 2020, she published a resignation letter on her blog in which she claimed that management indifference to harassment from progressive staffers had created an intolerable work environment. She has since argued that progressive ideology is increasingly hostile to Jews and other successful minorities because they undermine the narrative of systemic racism pushed by antiracist activists.
Jews came to America, often as refugees fleeing persecution, and were able to flourish here precisely because opportunities weren’t closed off to them on the basis of identity. The story of minority immigrant success is inconsistent with the progressive narrative of the United States as a country founded upon and organized around racism. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Terence Corcoran: You Are Not You, And Other Truths Of The New World
Terence Corcoran
Financial Post, Sept. 2, 2020
The storm has been moving in for some time, building up over decades of political and academic activism fuelled by the ideological advocacy of a long line of leftist intellectuals and writers, from Karl Marx through Herbert Marcuse’s New Left celebrations of the ‘60s and ‘70s to the Occupy Movement to Naomi Klein. After half a century of torch-passing from one anti-liberal theorist to another, North America and other Western nations have settled on a final truth: You are not an individual.
In the new world, people are slotted into assorted collective categories: white or Black, oppressed or oppressor, straight or LGBQ, steeped in inequality, male or female or other, green or a denier, young sidelined millennial or aging privileged colonialist, a Muslim or a Jew or a Christian. From now on, these are the primary labels that define and describe your role in life and shape the content of your mind and character. Forget and submerge your individual capacities and abilities, your intellectual independence, your personal perspectives, ambitions and failures.
Individualism is dead. In its place is a new political environment in which all people are supposedly driven by and classified according to their membership in one of dozens of collective categories that determine each person’s world view and behaviour that is controlled by ingrained collective bias and beliefs. You may or may not even be conscious of your motivations. In this new era, people are said to be motivated by “unconscious bias” rather than their own thinking.
To reach this new era of anti-individualism, the greatest political and philosophical achievements of the last few centuries are being deliberately eroded. Classical liberalism and other core political and philosophical foundations supporting individualism are being turfed and replaced by a new world order: systemic collectivism. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Tony Bobulinski and Implausible Deniability
Roger Kimball
The Spectator, Oct. 28, 2020
It turns out that the 2020 US presidential election is not between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, as we have been told. It is not even between Donald Trump and The Committee, that shadow compact of left-wing actors who settle on Biden as the most acceptable face for their radical make-America-over agenda. Everyone who gives the matter a moment’s thought knows that a vote for Joe Biden is really just a proxy vote for Kamala Harris.
But last night, Fox News aired an extraordinary interview that Tucker Carlson conducted with Tony Bobulinski, a former naval officer who had been tapped by the Bidens, Hunter and Joe’s brother Jim, to be CEO of a financial company they were attempting to put together. Watch it here (unless YouTube has taken it down). What it shows is that the upcoming election is between America and the Chinese Communist party.
That may seem bald, or overstated, or melodramatic. In fact, it is the stranger-than-fiction truth. Bobulinski demonstrates, with copious contemporary documentation, that various Chinese entities, all of whom — like all things Chinese — are ultimately answerable to the party, have invested heavily in the Bidens via various business enterprises of Joe’s son Hunter. We are talking about tens of millions of dollars.
Why would they do this? To capitalize on the Biden name. That’s all that Hunter had to offer — it was, says Bobulinski, his ‘only qualification’ — but it was quite a lot: access to the Vice President of the United States, in the first instance, and now access to the man the polls keep telling us might be president. In short, influence peddling of the grossest and most spectacular kind.
When influence is peddled, obligations are incurred. When obligations are incurred, favors can be expected. When the favors are owed, directly or indirectly, to the Chinese Communist party, you want to be sure that the people in debt are not, you know, presiding over the government of the United States of America. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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The U.S. Has An ‘Intelligence’ Problem
Holman W. Jenkins Jr.
WSJ, Oct. 23, 2020
Let’s talk about lying. They admitted to having no evidence, but 50 former U.S. intelligence officials claimed the leak of Hunter Biden emails has “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” No it doesn’t. The Russians have easier, less falsifiable ways to put disinformation into circulation. In fact, nothing about the laptop episode is reminiscent of Russian efforts with which we’ve become familiar. Given much documentary and testimonial evidence as well as Occam’s razor, the laptop is exactly what the New York Post says it is.
The Biden campaign has conceded as much. The 50-plus signers know it. Theirs is nakedly a campaign of disinformation in the middle of an election. I am sorry to say to some of my readers: If you’re so dumb as to lose all critical judgment every time you hear the word “Russians,” somebody will take advantage of it.
As far as I know, nothing is illegal about former spooks conspiring to influence an election. A working assumption, though, has always been that a fearless and truth-telling press was ready to expose and shame such activity.
More than anything on Hunter’s laptop, this is the issue that should concern you now.
The Steele dossier came with no documentation, no declared sources, and was refuted by everybody named in it—and yet countless media and political types had no problem promoting it to roil our politics. The most important and likeliest Russian disinformation was made-up email content, denied by the Democratic and Obama officials involved, that you still haven’t been told about. This suspected Russian disinformation embarked James Comey on his chaotic interventions in the 2016 election, but the details remain conveniently hidden in the only one of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s reports to be buried under a top-secret classification.
The signers of the Biden defense misdirection, led by Obama intelligence chieftains John Brennan and James Clapper, are a who’s who of those behind earlier fiascoes. Many were heard also to claim that another recent disclosure is Russian disinformation: a document, from July 2016, indicating that the Russians knew from a source inside Hillary’s campaign about her plan to tar Donald Trump with false treason allegations. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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FOR FURTHER REFERENCE:
WATCH: The Media’s Take on Trump’s Charlottesville Quote – Nothing can Be Further from the Truth: Pulse of Israel , Oct. 2020 — Caroline Glick takes on the Charlottesville lie about President Trump head-on.
What Divides Us Is Class, Not Race: Jeff Rubin, Quillette, Oct. 24, 2020 — Black lives matter. It’s become a rallying cry for those seeking social and racial justice. These three words express the idea, symbolized by the death of George Floyd, that race defines the fault line fracturing our society.
Journalistic Dereliction of Duty: Rex Murphy, CERC, Oct. 22, 2020 — As I write it is now the seventh day — and a bare two weeks till the presidential vote — that Twitter, Facebook and their cooperative partners in the television networks and mainline newspapers have smothered or refused to print or broadcast the devastating reports concerning the dealings of Hunter Biden and his father, presidential candidate Joe Biden.
If Trump Is Re-Elected, Oregon Could Be Headed for a Crackup: Dave Seminara, WSJ, Oct. 23, 2020 — This year’s protests in Portland and Bend, Ore., have many wondering how the Beaver State’s increasingly radicalized left will cope if President Trump is re-elected.
A Black Lives Matter Republican: Jilian Kay Melchior, WSJ, Oct. 21, 2020 — Black Lives Matter relies on a rhetorical deception. Nobody can dispute the premise, but the movement has put forth objectives that range from radical to bizarre—not only to defund the police but to “dismantle cisgender privilege” and “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.” Kimberly Klacik aims to reclaim the slogan’s original meaning.
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This week’s Communiqué Isranet is Communiqué: Arrêter Erdogan pendant qu’il en est encore temps (Octobre 30,2020)
