Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

The manifestly dishonest culture war rages on. Since a majority now see through conservatives anti-tax on the wealthy for needed welfare for the more needy stance, their fight against legislation to protect the environment, and their fight against workers' and women's rights, they have little left but their dishonest and manipulative creation known as the culture war.

Related: Absolutely brilliant. And i was reminded something about the Rude Pundit which must have been read before: "But what do I know. I've only been a professor for roughly 30 years at public universities. Or maybe I might have more fucking insight than a greedy, attention-hungry dilettante with delusions of intellect."

I couldn't escape from the name Jordan Peterson
[...]
Florida Gov. DeSantis signs bill to limit discussion of race
[...]
“It’s just illustrating Gov. DeSantis’ pattern of Black attack policies led by Republican legislators. He has taken a culture war to a classic Republican battleground, which is the public schools. It’s going to hurt our children’s futures,”' said Democratic Rep. Angie Nixon, who is Black. “CRT is not taught in K-12 education here in our public schools.”

[Insert: conix, Political correctness. "Woke". Critical Race Theory. Now Kendi.
[...]How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory
Thanks. You saved me chasing those videos. I never heard of that Rufo dude before, yet
seems he's a key - even the KEY - player in the present political outrage around CRT.
P - To Christopher Rufo, a term for a school of legal scholarship looked like the perfect weapon.
[...]
...Rufo summarized his findings in an article for the Web site of City Journal, the magazine of the center-right Manhattan Institute: “Under the banner of ‘antiracism,’ Seattle’s Office of Civil Rights is now explicitly endorsing principles of segregationism, group-based guilt, and race essentialism—ugly concepts that should have been left behind a century ago.”
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=166080529]

DeSantis’ focus on culture war issues involving race, gender and the coronavirus have made him one of the most popular Republican politicians in the country and a likely 2024 presidential candidate.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=172746247

That article of yours is a beauty. In the reading and struggling to decide
what to say i was relieved to see Judd Legum did it best at the end.

The real cancel culture
Judd Legum

[...]

Ironically, as Weiss cashes in on her critique of "cancel culture," The Free Press has become a central part of a sophisticated right-wing ecosystem that seeks to tear down anything and anyone who diverges too far from their ideology.

The latest effort began on April 9, 2024, when NPR editor Uri Berliner wrote in The Free Press that his employer had "lost America's trust." Using a formula that is typical for The Free Press, Berliner describes himself as fitting the liberal mold — admitting that he was "raised by a lesbian peace activist mother" and "eagerly voted against Trump twice." But Berliner says that NPR has gone too far. NPR, according to Berliner, has abandoned its "open-minded spirit" and is too focused on catering to the left.

One of the core pieces of evidence Berliner cited was NPR's coverage of allegations that the "Trump campaign colluded with Russia." Berliner said NPR "hitched our wagon to Trump’s most visible antagonist, Representative Adam Schiff." He complained that Schiff was interviewed 25 times and, during those interviews, "alluded to purported evidence of collusion." But an NPR spokesperson told Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple that between January 2017 and December 2019, NPR conducted 900 interviews with congressional lawmakers, including stalwart conservatives like Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Paul Ryan (R-WI). In other words, Schiff did not dominate the coverage. Overall, Wemple describes Berliner's critique of NPR's Russia coverage as a "lazy… feelings-based critique of the sort that passes for media reporting these days."

[...]

That is when the effort to punish NPR and Maher intensified. Chris Rufo, a right-wing operative, has been featured in The Free Press as a contributor and a podcast guest. Rufo began examining Maher's 29,400 tweets and highlighting examples that "exposed" her as liberal. (He later summarized his findings in a piece published by City Journal.) Rufo objects to tweets in which Maher discusses "structural privilege," "non-binary people," and "toxic masculinity." He also highlights that Maher's daily routine included "yoga, iced coffee, back-to-back meetings, and Zoom-based psychotherapy." In another tweet, Maher calls Trump — who rose to political prominence by falsely claiming that the nation's first Black president was illegitimate because he was born in Africa — a "deranged racist psychopath." For Rufo, Maher is but one example of a growing problem: a "rising cohort of affluent, left-wing, female managers."

[...]

Rufo also suggests that NDI is really an arm of U.S. intelligence, citing "national security analyst J. Michael Waller." According to Waller, NDI is an "instrument of… the global revolution elements of the Obama team." Waller works for the Center for Security Policy, a far-right organization founded by Frank Gaffney. In 2009, Gaffney famously claimed that there is "mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself."

Waller also has a checkered history with the facts. He played a key role in promoting the false claim that left-wing agitators, not Trump supporters, were responsible for the violence on January 6, 2021. Waller based this claim based on his own personal observations of the crowd. "A few young men wearing Trump or MAGA hats backwards and who did not fit in with the rest of the crowd in terms of their actions and demeanor, whom I presumed to be Antifa or other leftist agitators," Waller wrote. According to Waller, these "agents-provocateurs placed hundreds of unsuspecting supporters of the president in physical danger."

Later in the lengthy piece, Rufo admits there "is no way to discern whether Maher was an agent, asset, or otherwise connected with the CIA." But Rufo claims this is irrelevant because Maher "was undoubtedly advancing the agenda of the national security apparatus."

Having acknowledged that his core claim about Maher's connections to U.S. intelligence is pure speculation, Rufo then turns his attention to unsubstantiated gossip about Maher's personal life. In her 30s, Rufo writes, Maher "had her sights on powerful men in the tech sector." But Maher "considered finding someone lesser as she approached 40." This, according to Rufo, somehow helps prove that Maher is "a vessel for power, with few original thoughts."

The incoherence of the argument underscores the reality of the political moment. There is a relentless right-wing operation seeking to inflict pain on their ideological adversaries. Some, like Rufo, are the political equivalent of street brawlers, willing to say or do anything to achieve their objective. Others, like Weiss and The Free Press, give the movement a more journalistic and professional sheen. But no one involved is a supporter of free expression or an opponent of cancel culture. Rather, they are the cultural force aggressively pursuing cancellation.

Thanks. Your - https://popular.info/p/the-real-cancel-culture?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1664&post_id=144565034&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=6zfhm&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email