Cultural Revolution launched by Woke Elites
Newsletter published on June 15, 2020
(1) Silent Majority that voted for Nixon will also vote for Trump
(2) Trump bets his presidency on a ‘silent majority’; Democrats downplay
chaos and looting
(3) Insanity amid Cultural Revolution launched by Woke Elites
(4) Floyd killing was Street Theater; this is 1917 all over again
(5) Columbus statue thrown into Virginia Lake; beheaded in Boston
(6) Protesters destroy statues across US
(7) Cecil Rhodes: Protesters demand Oxford statue removal
(8) UC Berkeley prof: Black incarceration is proportional to their
involvement in violent crime
(9) UC Berkeley responds: "it goes against our values as a department
and our commitment to equity and inclusion"
(1) Silent Majority that voted for Nixon will also vote for Trump
June 13, 2020
This Isn't A Way To Defeat Trump
At Counterpunch Professor David Schultz sees a final fracturing of the
Democratic party, labor, and civil rights coalition:
George Floyd being killed by a police officer in Minneapolis is not
simply about the death of one Black man. His death also killed an
historic but uneasy alliance among the Democratic Party, labor unions,
and the civil rights movement. The reaction to his death is ending the
last vestiges of the historic New Deal coalition that defined
progressive politics in American for at least 50 years, ushering in an
era where it now appears that the Democratic Party and the civil rights
community are at odds with labor and unions.
What was the last time these posturing millionaires with political power
have done something for the working class?
The 'autonomous zone' in Seattle seems to be run by 'Black Lives Matter':
They come from a variety of groups and interests, ranging from Black
Lives Matter organizers to labor and neighborhood groups. Most want the
police precinct to be turned into a community center and much of the
department’s funding to be redirected to health and social services.
"What you see out here is people coming together and loving each other,"
said Mark Henry Jr. of Black Lives Matter. "I see people coming from
different walks of life ... learning from each other."
The zone was set up after the police left the Capitol Hill precinct.
Police Chief Carmen Best said the decision to leave the Capitol Hill
precinct wasn’t hers and she was angry about it. So who told the police
to leave the precinct?
Pepe Escobar suspects that the Democrats are using the 'autonomous zone'
as a 'color revolution' method to contrast themselves to Donald Trump:
Capital Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) is supported by the city of Seattle
– run by a Democrat – which is supported by the governor of Washington
State, also a Democrat.
There’s no chance Washington State will use the National Guard to crush
CHAZ. And Trump cannot take over Washington State National Guard without
the approval of the governor, even though he has tweeted, "Take back
your city NOW. If you don’t do it, I will. This is not a game."
It’s enlightening to observe that "counter-insurgency" can be applied in
Afghanistan and the tribal areas; to occupy Iraq; to protect the looting
of oil/gas in eastern Syria. But not at home. Even if 58% of Americans
would actually support it: for many among them, the Commune may be as
bad if not worse than looting.
But then there are those firmly opposed. Among them: the "Butcher of
Fallujah" Mad Dog Mattis; color revolution practitioners NED; Nike; JP
Morgan; the whole Democratic Party establishment; and virtually the
whole U.S. Army establishment.
Escobar points out that 'Black Lives Matter' as an organization has no
real political program at least when compared to the movements of the
1960s. It is fed by corporate money and the Ford foundation. The Donate
button on its web page goes to Act Blue, a Democrat donation collection
service which also works for the Sanders and Biden campaigns.
Do the Democrats believe that they can win the election with such a
'strategy of tension' against a 'law and order' Trump?
If so they are making a huge mistake.
The 'silent majority' that voted for Nixon will also vote for Trump.
Posted by b on June 13, 2020 at 18:01 UTC
(2) Trump bets his presidency on a ‘silent majority’; Democrats downplay
chaos and looting
Trump bets his presidency on a ‘silent majority’
With his law-and-order, tough-on-protesters rhetoric, Donald Trump is
courting a suburban vote that might no longer exist.
By DAVID SIDERS
06/03/2020 04:30 AM EDT
The lines of demarcation between the nation’s cities and their suburbs
have faded in the decades since Richard M. Nixon courted the "Silent
Majority" that elected him to the White House.
With his law-and-order, tough-on-protesters rhetoric, Donald Trump is
betting his presidency it still exists.
The suburbs — not the red, but sparsely populated rural areas of the
country most often associated with Trump — are where Trump found the
majority of his support in 2016. Yet it was in the suburbs that
Democrats built their House majority two years ago in a dramatic midterm
repudiation of the Republican president.
Now, Trump’s approach to the violence and unrest that have gripped the
nation’s big cities seems calibrated toward winning back those places,
in the hopes that voters will recoil at the current images of chaos and
looting — as they did in the late 1960s — and look to the White House
for stability.
"This is giving adversaries a cudgel to hit America with." Other
countries are closely watching U.S. demonstrations over police violence
— and how the Trump administration is responding.
"There’s a lot of concern about the way the Minneapolis police acted,"
said former Rep. Tom Davis, a seven-term Republican from the suburbs of
Northern Virginia. "But whenever you start looting — and now the stuff’s
spread out to Leesburg, it’s in Manassas … the politics takes a
different turn."
Five months before the general election, according to national polls,
the political landscape for Trump is bleak. But there is a clear window
of opportunity: Trump remains popular in rural America, and he won the
suburbs by 4 percentage points in 2016 — largely on the backs of
non-college-educated whites.
There are millions more potential voters where those came from — people
who fit in Trump’s demographic sweet spot but did not vote. They live in
rural and exurban areas, but also in working class suburbs like Macomb
County, outside Detroit. They are who Republicans are referring to when
they talk about a new "silent majority" — the kind of potential voters
who, even if disgusted by police violence, are not joining in protest.
In Minnesota alone — where Floyd died and where protests have roiled
Minneapolis and St. Paul — the state Democratic Party estimates there
are 250,000 white, non-college-educated men who are eligible to vote but
aren’t registered — more than five times the number of votes Trump would
have needed to catch Hillary Clinton in the state in 2016.
"It’s what keeps me awake at night," said Pete Giangreco, a Democratic
strategist who has worked on nine presidential campaigns. "I think there
are a lot more people who support this president who didn’t vote last
time than opposed this president and didn’t vote last time. That is how
they win."
Trump, he said, "is playing to them, fanning the flames of division
instead of what just about every other president in our lifetimes —
Republican or Democrat —would do."
It is unclear how much more Trump can squeeze from his base. Rural areas
have few voters to offer, Democratic-heavy cities detest the president,
and the once-bright lines between them and the suburbs have blurred as
people of color diversified the commuter belts and wealthy whites
gentrified urban cores.
"You can’t do what Nixon called for, what ‘law and order’ meant in the
1960s, and ever have it succeed in America in 2020," said Paul Maslin, a
top Democratic pollster who worked on the presidential campaigns of
Jimmy Carter and Howard Dean.
The changing state of the urban-suburban relationship was on display not
only in the gains that Democrats made in the midterm elections, but in
the reaction this week of suburban swing district Democrats to Trump.
After Trump urged military action to stamp out protests, Rep. Elissa
Slotkin of Michigan lamented what she called a "dangerous path for our
institutions, our military — and our nation." In Virginia, Rep. Abigail
Spanberger, whose district includes the northern suburbs of Richmond,
accused the president of an "incendiary act of division."
In Minnesota, first-term Rep. Dean Phillips, appearing with protesters
over the weekend, addressed his suburban constituents directly: "To the
people that I represent in Wayzata and Minnetonka and Chanhassen and
Long Lake," he said, "I ask that you not be afraid to come here and to
listen and to feel this pain. I ask you to be afraid if you don’t …
Because if we don’t do something now, my friends, shame on all of us.
We’re brothers and sisters."
Phillips’ remarks were freighted with both partisan and generational
responses to Trump — the president’s rhetoric invoking the postwar
suburban politics of the past, Phillips’ "brothers and sisters" its present.
In the suburbs, said Lawrence Levy, executive dean of the National
Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, "unlike in 1968,
minorities are at the table."
And it is not just in the suburbs. Across the country, Trump’s base of
white, non-college-educated voters is declining as a share of the
electorate as the population becomes more diverse. Trump will almost
certainly carry those voters in November, but many Democrats believe Joe
Biden, the presumptive nominee, is poised to perform better with them
than Clinton did. The former vice president did well with white, working
class voters in the Democratic primary, and polls suggest he is stronger
with them than Clinton was in 2016. ...
Research on the effects of civil unrest on elections is mixed,
suggesting in some cases that it has helped Democrats and in other
cases, such as Nixon’s victory in 1968, Republicans. Because the lens
through which the electorate is viewing the current unrest is so
fractured, Floyd’s death and the resulting protests are likely to be a
motivating factor for segments of both parties. On the one hand,
Republicans are consuming warnings about antifa on Fox News. On the
other, Democrats hear Kamala Harris describe Trump on MSNBC as "the
worst combination of George Wallace and Richard Nixon."
Yet the concern for Democrats is that base-mobilizing events do not lift
all candidates equally, and Trump has the financial advantage and the
infrastructure to run-up turnout in the fall.
His turnout operation was visible in the early primaries this year, when
Trump — despite having no serious competition — drew Republicans to the
polls at historic levels in Iowa and New Hampshire. His campaign sent
hundreds of staffers to the first primary state in a test run for the
general election.
The recent unrest suddenly provides a cultural wedge issue for Trump
that has the potential to overshadow suburban qualms about his
polarizing style or his stewardship of the coronavirus crisis. ...
Comment (Peter M.): Whereas the MSM lauds BLM and ignores the
destruction, urban Blacks are directly affected by the burning of
grocery stores, drugstores, department stores etc. They might vote more
for Trump as a result of the destruction of the inner cities. Asians and
Latinos, being more traditionalist, might also back Law and Order. I
wish there was some other candidate than Trump - like Robert F Kennedy
jr. But Trump would be preferable to a Globalist.
(3) Insanity amid Cultural Revolution launched by Woke Elites
Welcome To Your New World Order: A Rundown Of Woke Insanity Amid The
Newest Cultural Revolution
As the nation continues to spiral under its 21st century cultural
revolution, here's a running list of the ongoing insanity.
By Tristan Justice
JUNE 12, 2020
America is in the midst of a new cultural civil war that for years has
been brewing under the surface as left-wing academics breed aggressively
woke children now permeating throughout the nation’s mainstream
institutions.
Since the killing of George Floyd at the knees of a Minneapolis police
officer sparked the worst outbreak of civil unrest in decades, protests
that grew out of demanding justice for Floyd morphed into a dark
operation to fundamentally transform the nation’s psyche, convincing the
people of their own inherent evil from ancestral wrongs.
Battle lines are clearly being drawn, where the radical left has offered
Americans a binary choice in a false dichotomy between total submission
or unrelenting exile with those opposed to the new woke world order cast
out of society as unrepentant racists refusing to atone for past
generations’ sins. No justice, no peace. Silence is violence. You’re
either with us, or against us. There is no middle ground. Which side of
history are you on?
Of course in reality, (and sanity), it’s clearly not that black and
white, but if recent events show us anything, they expose that this
mentality is no longer one of a fringe left-wing movement but a central
tenant of our mainstream culture of what it means to make "progress."
America, according to the now only acceptable narrative, is an
irredeemably racist society that was built for the sole purpose to
oppress. It has never been great. Anyone who thinks otherwise, is as
guilty as the slaveholders who lived more than 150 years ago.
For as long as the nation continues to go mad, purging books, movies,
statues and history in its own cultural revolution launched by woke
elites, The Federalist will be chronicling its destruction, updating
this list with each new event in its collapse. The Federalist will also
be keeping tally of those fired from lack of allegiance to the new woke
overlords found here.
Updated June 14, 2020
Minneapolis City Council Officially Dismantles Police Department The
Minneapolis City Council moved through on its promise to abolish its
police department by a unanimous vote on June 12 to replace its law
enforcement with a "transformative new model."
The resolution passed declared the city government would begin a year
long process to develop its new system of providing public safety.
New York Times Op-ed: ‘Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police’ The
New York Times ran an op-ed on June 12 erasing any doubt that calls to
"defund the police" actually mean the complete abolition of law
enforcement, as if the Minneapolis City Council’s Friday vote to do just
that wasn’t proof already.
As this list will later explain, the Times had previously issued an
apology to readers for publishing a well-reasoned editorial by Arkansas
Republican Sen. Tom Cotton arguing for Trump to "send in the troops" to
quell violent riots after staff complained its publication put black
employees "in danger."
Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan shot back at President Donald Trump on June
12 as the president called for an end to the city’s partial occupation
by socialist protestors.
"Seattle is fine," Durkan wrote, defending the demonstrators keeping
downtown businesses that have survived the pandemic closed as heroic
exemplars of free expression. "Don’t be so afraid of democracy."
Mayor Jenny Durkan @MayorJenny Seattle is fine. Don’t be so afraid of
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump Seattle Mayor says, about the
anarchists takeover of her city, "it is a Summer of Love". These Liberal
Dems don’t have a clue. The terrorists burn and pillage our cities, and
they think it is just wonderful, even the death. Must end this Seattle
takeover now!
Julianne Moore
@_juliannemoore Today, #ITakeResponsibility for my role in eradicating
racism in America. Unless white America acknowledges its privilege,
systemic racism will persist. Act Now. What will you commit to?
https://itakeresponsibility.org . @NAACP @itakeresponsibility
#itakeresponsibility #blacklivesmatter
(4) Floyd killing was Street Theater; this is 1917 all over again
From: cg <acmealethia@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2020 09:12:19 -0400
Subject: Street performance art
Dear Peter, I just watched for the first time the video of "George
Floyd." I don't know when I started looking closely to see when fraud is
starting place, but that was long ago, even before I went to Morocco in
1967. The video of "George Floyd" is calculated street performance,
including the "observers." Fake. This is 1917 all over again, even with
the same players.
Comment (Peter M.): Do you mean February 1917 or October 1917?
(5) Columbus statue thrown into Virginia Lake; beheaded in Boston
Christopher Columbus statues toppled in Virginia and beheaded in Boston
Statue was set on fire and thrown into lake and Statue in Boston was
beheaded in latest action against monuments
Oliver Milman and Associated Press
Thu 11 Jun 2020 14.47 AEST First published on Wed 10 Jun 2020 22.54 AEST
Virginia protesters pull down Christopher Columbus statue and throw it
in lake – video A statue of Christopher Columbus in Virginia has been
torn down by protesters, who then set it on fire and threw it into a
lake, in the latest action against monuments in the wake of George
Floyd’s death.
The statue, in the city of Richmond, was toppled on Tuesday night less
than two hours after protesters gathered in the city’s Byrd Park were
chanting for it to be taken down, according to reports.
Protesters uses several ropes to remove the statue, with a a sign that
reads "Columbus represents genocide" placed on the spray-painted
foundation that once held the figure. It was then set on fire and rolled
into a lake in the park, NBC 12 reported.
Elsewhere, another statue of Columbus in Boston’s Atlantic Avenue in
Massachusetts was beheaded.
Korey O'Brien (@koreyobrienTV) A @7News photographer was the first one
to discover the head had been knocked off the Christopher Columbus
statue along the waterfront in the North End. Boston Police were on
scene investigating later overnight. pic.twitter.com/YIIHUiPua9
June 10, 2020
Columbus is venerated in several statues in the US for his exploration
of the Americas but has also provoked more recent controversy over his
role in killing, kidnapping and looting around the Caribbean islands and
the American mainland in the 15th century.
Native American advocates have also long pressed states to change
Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day over concerns that Columbus
spurred centuries of genocide against indigenous populations in the
Americas.
In Richmond, activist Chelsea Higgs-Wise and other protesters spoke to a
crowd gathered at Byrd Park about the struggles of indigenous people and
African Americans in America. "We have to start where it all began,"
Higgs-Wise said during her speech. "We have to start with the people who
stood first on this land."
The Columbus statue was dedicated in Richmond in December 1927, and had
been the first statue of Christopher Columbus erected in the south. Its
toppling comes amid national protests over the death of George Floyd and
several days after a statue of the Confederate Gen Williams Carter
Wickham was pulled from its pedestal in Monroe Park by demonstrators who
also used ropes to tear it down.
Vanessa Bolin, a member of the Richmond Indigenous Society, told the
crowd she did not come "to hijack" the protests against police
brutality, but to "stand in solidarity" with the people. Another
speaker, Joseph Rogers, declared the area "Powhatan land", and talked
about the impact of white supremacy and institutionalized racism on both
groups.
The toppling of the statue came as the US navy announced its own
symbolic change by not flying the Confederate battle flag any more. The
navy joins the US marines, which also said it will not be using the
flag. Meanwhile, the leadership of the US army has said it is open to
renaming military bases that were named after Confederate generals.
(6) Protesters destroy statues across US
Christopher Columbus statue beheaded as protesters destroy statues across US
A statue of Christopher Columbus has been dragged down by protesters in
Minnesota, while another in Boston has been removed after being beheaded.
AP and staff writers
JUNE 11, 20201:32PM
Protesters have pulled down a statute of Christopher Columbus outside
the Minnesota State Capitol.
A rope was thrown around the 3m-tall bronze statue on Wednesday
afternoon and it was pulled off its stone pedestal.
The protesters, including Dakota and Ojibwe Indians, said they consider
Columbus a symbol of genocide against Native Americans.
They said they had tried many times to remove it through the political
process, but without success.
State Patrol troopers in helmets, who provide security in the Capitol
complex, stood by at a distance but did not try to stop the protesters,
who celebrated afterwards with Native American singing and drumming.
The troopers eventually formed a line to protect the toppled statue so
it could be taken away.
The protest followed a similar incident on Tuesday night in Richmond,
Virginia, and another in Boston, where a statue of Columbus located in
Waterfront Park in was removed after being beheaded.
Sons of Columbia @SonsOf_Columbia Early Wednesday morning the statue of
Christopher Columbus located at Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park in
Boston's North End was beheaded. In response, the Boston mayor has
removed the statue.
12:30 PM - Jun 11, 2020 In the UK, London mayor Sadiq Khan posted video
on Twitter on Tuesday of officials in East London removing a statue of
18th-century merchant and slave owner Robert Milligan from its place in
the city’s docklands.
It came a day after Mr Khan announced that more statues of imperialist
figures could be removed from Britain’s streets after protesters in
Bristol knocked down a monument to slave trader Edward Colston on Sunday.
"It’s a sad truth that much of our wealth was derived from the slave
trade – but this does not have to be celebrated in our public spaces,"
he wrote on Twitter.
Sadiq Khan @SadiqKhan UPDATE: The statue of slave trader Robert Milligan
has now been removed from West India Quay.
It’s a sad truth that much of our wealth was derived from the slave
trade - but this does not have to be celebrated in our public spaces.
#BlackLivesMatter
The removal of Milligan’s statue came even before a new commission
announced by Mr Khan got under way.
The commission will review statues, murals, street art, street names and
other memorials and consider which legacies should be celebrated, the
mayor’s office said.
Joe Biggs, mayor of London’s Tower Hamlets borough, following the
toppling of a statue of slave trader by demonstrators in the city of
Bristol on Sunday, said: "We’ve acted quickly to both ensure public
safety and respond to the concerns of our residents, which I share."
The moves have revived calls for Oxford University to remove a statue of
Cecil Rhodes, a Victorian imperialist in southern Africa who made a
fortune from mines and endowed Oxford University’s Rhodes scholarships.
Several hundred supporters of the Rhodes Must Fall group gathered near
the statue at the university’s college on Tuesday, chanting "Take it
down" before holding a silent sit-down vigil in the street to
memorialise George Floyd.
Oxford city officials urged the college to apply for permission to
remove the statue so that it could be placed in a museum.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has acknowledged that it was "a
cold reality" that people of colour in Britain experienced
discrimination, but said those who attacked police or desecrated public
monuments should face "the full force of the law".
Some historical figures have complex legacies.
Douglas Murray @DouglasKMurray Congratulations to everyone who guessed
which founder of a major world religion was also a slave-owner. True
there aren't any statues to him. Or many drawings. But perhaps the Woke
mob can insist that anybody named after him just changes their name?
That should do it.
At weekend protests in London, demonstrators scrawled "was a racist" on
a statue of Winston Churchill.
Britain’s wartime prime minister is revered as the man who led the
country to victory against Nazi Germany. But he was also a staunch
defender of the British Empire and expressed racist views.
Mr Khan suggested Churchill’s statue should stay up.
"Nobody’s perfect, whether it’s Churchill, whether it’s Gandhi, whether
it’s Malcolm X," he told the BBC, adding that schools should teach
children about historical figures "warts and all".
"But there are some statues that are quite clear-cut," Mr Khan said.
"Slavers are quite clear-cut in my view, plantation owners are quite
clear-cut."
(7) Cecil Rhodes: Protesters demand Oxford statue removal
By Michael Race and Nathan Briant
9 June 2020
Thousands of people have gathered outside an Oxford college to demand
the removal of a statue of imperialist Cecil Rhodes.
A group of councillors earlier backed the campaign to remove it and
called on Oxford University to "decolonise".
Twenty-six Oxford city councillors signed a letter saying the figure at
Oriel College was "incompatible" with the city's "commitment to
anti-racism".
Oriel College said it "abhors racism and discrimination in all its forms".
Campaigners said Rhodes, a 19th Century businessman and politician in
southern Africa, represented white supremacy and is steeped in
colonialism and racism.
A statue of slaveholder Robert Milligan was earlier removed from outside
the Museum of London Docklands after mayor Sadiq Khan said any links to
slavery "should be taken down".
At the protest, organisers from the Rhodes Must Fall group drew chalk
crosses on either side of High Street in Oxford outside the college's
entrance to enforce social distancing.
Protesters chanted "take it down" and then held a silence for 8 minutes
and 46 seconds in memory of George Floyd - the same length of time a
white police officer was seen to kneel on his neck.
The protest coincided with George Floyd's funeral in Houston. In London
about 50 activists gathered at Nelson Mandela's statue in Parliament
Square to observe a minute's silence in his honour before marching to
Downing Street.
Protesters filled Oxford's High Street and traffic was rerouted Oxford's
two MPs joined calls to remove the Rhodes statue, which have reignited
after the statue of Edward Colston, a 17th Century slave trader, was
toppled in Bristol on Sunday.
About 240,000 people had signed online petitions by 19:30 BST calling
for the statue's removal, while city councillors said in a letter that
the "city's public art and monuments should reflect its values".
Why is Cecil Rhodes such a controversial figure?
"The presence of this statue on our high street is incompatible with our
city's proud internationalist heritage and commitment to anti-racism,"
added the letter, which was signed by most of Labour's 34 councillors on
the 48-seat council.
City council leader Susan Brown did not sign the letter with her Labour
colleagues but tweeted saying she had "great sympathy" with the campaign.
She urged the college to apply to the council for planning permission to
remove the statue.
Because of its Grade II-listed status, she said, it could be "placed in
a museum, such as the Ashmolean or the Museum of Oxford".
Protestors have been calling for the statue of the British Imperialist
Cecil Rhodes to be removed for several years
Femi Nylander, Rhodes Must Fall campaigner, told the BBC the university
needed to improve its representation of black students, "decolonise" its
curriculum and remove the statue.
"They should not be continuing to celebrate this man," he added. "Having
a statue is a celebration."
'Must come down'
In an open letter to the university's vice-chancellor Louise Richardson,
a host of Oxford student groups and organisations said the university
had "failed to address its institutional racism" and set out a series of
demands to "make upholding anti-racist values a reality".
Anneliese Dodds, the shadow chancellor and Oxford East MP, said: "[The
statue's] presence is a visible symbol of racism and prejudice for many.
It is clear that there is now an overwhelming consensus for its removal.
"I support Susan Brown's call for Oriel College to seek a means of
removing the statue."
Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrat Oxford West and Abingdon MP, said the
Rhodes statue "must come down" but said she did not endorse "vigilante
action".
The protest observed an eight-minute 46-second silence in memory of
George Floyd In a statement, Oriel College said it aimed "to fight
prejudice and champion equal opportunities for everyone regardless of
race, gender, sexuality or faith".
"We believe black lives matter and support the right to peaceful
protest. The power of education is a catalyst for equality and
inclusiveness."
It earlier said it "continued to debate and discuss the issues" raised
by the "contested heritage" of Cecil Rhodes.
Oriel College decided not to remove the statue in High Street in 2016
and said the figure "was a reminder of the complexity of history and of
the legacies of colonialism".
It denied claims that donors threatened to withdraw more than £100m of
funding if the statue was removed.
Thames Valley Police tweeted: "You may have seen a number of us out
policing the organised protest today. We have been working with the
organisers and the public to facilitate a peaceful protest & keep our
communities safe.
"We would like to thank the public for their co-operation, patience &
continued support."
Oxford University has not responded to requests for comment.
Who was Cecil Rhodes?
Imperialist, businessman and politician who played a dominant role in
southern Africa in the late 19th Century, driving the annexation of vast
swathes of land
Born the son of a vicar in Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, in 1853,
he first went to Africa at the age of 17; grew cotton with his brother
in Natal, but moved into diamond mining, founding De Beers, which until
recently controlled the global trade
Rhodes's bequest continues to finance scholarships bearing his name,
allowing overseas students to come to Oxford University; among them
former US President Bill Clinton
Controversial even in his own time, Rhodes backed the disastrous Jameson
Raid of 1895, in which a small British force tried to overthrow the
gold-rich Transvaal Republic, helping prompt the Second Boer War, in
which tens of thousands died.
(8) UC Berkeley prof: Black incarceration is proportional to their
involvement in violent crime
Anonymous Berkeley Professor Shreds BLM Injustice Narrative
by Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2020 - 13:05
An anonymous history professor at U.C. Berkeley has penned an open
letter against the current narratives of racial injustice underpinning
the BLM movement and ongoing protests over the death of George Floyd.
Its authenticity was confirmed by Kentucky State University Assistant
Professor of Political Science, Wilfred Reilley, who says he was sent a
copy of the letter along with Stanford University economist Thomas Sowell.
I can confirm that the letter in the thread below was sent to me and Tom
Sowell. It's really worth reading, in a time of widespread panic.
— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) June 12, 2020
Reprinted in its entirety below (emphasis ours) via @tracybeanz: * * *
UC Berkeley History Professor's Open Letter Against BLM, Police
Brutality and Cultural Orthodoxy
Dear profs X, Y, Z
I am one of your colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley. I
have met you both personally but do not know you closely, and am
contacting you anonymously, with apologies. I am worried that writing
this email publicly might lead to me losing my job, and likely all
future jobs in my field.
In your recent departmental emails you mentioned our pledge to
diversity, but I am increasingly alarmed by the absence of diversity of
opinion on the topic of the recent protests and our community response
to them.
In the extended links and resources you provided, I could not find a
single instance of substantial counter-argument or alternative narrative
to explain the under-representation of black individuals in academia or
their over-representation in the criminal justice system. The
explanation provided in your documentation, to the near exclusion of all
others, is univariate: the problems of the black community are caused by
whites, or, when whites are not physically present, by the infiltration
of white supremacy and white systemic racism into American brains,
souls, and institutions.
Many cogent objections to this thesis have been raised by sober voices,
including from within the black community itself, such as Thomas Sowell
and Wilfred Reilly. These people are not racists or 'Uncle Toms'. They
are intelligent scholars who reject a narrative that strips black people
of agency and systematically externalizes the problems of the black
community onto outsiders. Their view is entirely absent from the
departmental and UCB-wide communiques.
The claim that the difficulties that the black community faces are
entirely causally explained by exogenous factors in the form of white
systemic racism, white supremacy, and other forms of white
discrimination remains a problematic hypothesis that should be
vigorously challenged by historians. Instead, it is being treated as an
axiomatic and actionable truth without serious consideration of its
profound flaws, or its worrying implication of total black impotence.
This hypothesis is transforming our institution and our culture, without
any space for dissent outside of a tightly policed, narrow discourse.
A counternarrative exists. If you have time, please consider examining
some of the documents I attach at the end of this email. Overwhelmingly,
the reasoning provided by BLM and allies is either primarily anecdotal
(as in the case with the bulk of Ta-Nehisi Coates' undeniably moving
article) or it is transparently motivated. As an example of the latter
problem, consider the proportion of black incarcerated Americans. This
proportion is often used to characterize the criminal justice system as
anti-black. However, if we use the precise same methodology, we would
have to conclude that the criminal justice system is even more anti-male
than it is anti-black.
Would we characterize criminal justice as a systemically misandrist
conspiracy against innocent American men? I hope you see that this type
of reasoning is flawed, and requires a significant suspension of our
rational faculties. Black people are not incarcerated at higher rates
than their involvement in violent crime would predict. This fact has
been demonstrated multiple times across multiple jurisdictions in
multiple countries.
And yet, I see my department uncritically reproducing a narrative that
diminishes black agency in favor of a white-centric explanation that
appeals to the department's apparent desire to shoulder the 'white man's
burden' and to promote a narrative of white guilt.
If we claim that the criminal justice system is white-supremacist, why
is it that Asian Americans, Indian Americans, and Nigerian Americans are
incarcerated at vastly lower rates than white Americans? This is a funny
sort of white supremacy. Even Jewish Americans are incarcerated less
than gentile whites. I think it's fair to say that your average white
supremacist disapproves of Jews. And yet, these alleged white
supremacists incarcerate gentiles at vastly higher rates than Jews. None
of this is addressed in your literature. None of this is explained,
beyond hand-waving and ad hominems. "Those are racist dogwhistles". "The
model minority myth is white supremacist". "Only fascists talk about
black-on-black crime", ad nauseam.
These types of statements do not amount to counterarguments: they are
simply arbitrary offensive classifications, intended to silence and
oppress discourse. Any serious historian will recognize these for the
silencing orthodoxy tactics they are, common to suppressive regimes,
doctrines, and religions throughout time and space. They are intended to
crush real diversity and permanently exile the culture of robust
criticism from our department.
Increasingly, we are being called upon to comply and subscribe to BLM's
problematic view of history, and the department is being presented as
unified on the matter. In particular, ethnic minorities are being
aggressively marshaled into a single position. Any apparent unity is
surely a function of the fact that dissent could almost certainly lead
to expulsion or cancellation for those of us in a precarious position,
which is no small number.
I personally don't dare speak out against the BLM narrative, and with
this barrage of alleged unity being mass-produced by the administration,
tenured professoriat, the UC administration, corporate America, and the
media, the punishment for dissent is a clear danger at a time of
widespread economic vulnerability. I am certain that if my name were
attached to this email, I would lose my job and all future jobs, even
though I believe in and can justify every word I type.
The vast majority of violence visited on the black community is
committed by black people. There are virtually no marches for these
invisible victims, no public silences, no heartfelt letters from the UC
regents, deans, and departmental heads. The message is clear: Black
lives only matter when whites take them. Black violence is expected and
insoluble, while white violence requires explanation and demands
solution. Please look into your hearts and see how monstrously bigoted
this formulation truly is.
No discussion is permitted for nonblack victims of black violence, who
proportionally outnumber black victims of nonblack violence. This is
especially bitter in the Bay Area, where Asian victimization by black
assailants has reached epidemic proportions, to the point that the SF
police chief has advised Asians to stop hanging good-luck charms on
their doors, as this attracts the attention of (overwhelmingly black)
home invaders. Home invaders like George Floyd. For this actual, lived,
physically experienced reality of violence in the USA, there are no
marches, no tearful emails from departmental heads, no support from
McDonald's and Wal-Mart. For the History department, our silence is not
a mere abrogation of our duty to shed light on the truth: it is a
rejection of it.
The claim that black intraracial violence is the product of redlining,
slavery, and other injustices is a largely historical claim. It is for
historians, therefore, to explain why Japanese internment or the
massacre of European Jewry hasn't led to equivalent rates of dysfunction
and low SES performance among Japanese and Jewish Americans
respectively. Arab Americans have been viciously demonized since 9/11,
as have Chinese Americans more recently. However, both groups outperform
white Americans on nearly all SES indices - as do Nigerian Americans,
who incidentally have black skin. It is for historians to point out and
discuss these anomalies. However, no real discussion is possible in the
current climate at our department. The explanation is provided to us,
disagreement with it is racist, and the job of historians is to further
explore additional ways in which the explanation is additionally
correct. This is a mockery of the historical profession. [...]
The total alliance of major corporations involved in human exploitation
with BLM should be a warning flag to us, and yet this damning evidence
goes unnoticed, purposefully ignored, or perversely celebrated. We are
the useful idiots of the wealthiest classes, carrying water for Jeff
Bezos and other actual, real, modern-day slavers. Starbucks, an
organisation using literal black slaves in its coffee plantation
suppliers, is in favor of BLM. Sony, an organisation using cobalt mined
by yet more literal black slaves, many of whom are children, is in favor
of BLM. And so, apparently, are we. The absence of counter-narrative
enables this obscenity. Fiat lux, indeed.
There also exists a large constituency of what can only be called 'race
hustlers': hucksters of all colors who benefit from stoking the fires of
racial conflict to secure administrative jobs, charity management
positions, academic jobs and advancement, or personal political
entrepreneurship.
Given the direction our history department appears to be taking far from
any commitment to truth, we can regard ourselves as a formative training
institution for this brand of snake-oil salespeople. Their activities
are corrosive, demolishing any hope at harmonious racial coexistence in
our nation and colonizing our political and institutional life. Many of
their voices are unironically segregationist.
MLK would likely be called an Uncle Tom if he spoke on our campus today.
We are training leaders who intend, explicitly, to destroy one of the
only truly successful ethnically diverse societies in modern history. As
the PRC, an ethnonationalist and aggressively racially chauvinist
national polity with null immigration and no concept of jus solis
increasingly presents itself as the global political alternative to the
US, I ask you: Is this wise? Are we really doing the right thing?
As a final point, our university and department has made multiple
statements celebrating and eulogizing George Floyd. Floyd was a multiple
felon who once held a pregnant black woman at gunpoint. He broke into
her home with a gang of men and pointed a gun at her pregnant stomach.
He terrorized the women in his community. He sired and abandoned
multiple children, playing no part in their support or upbringing,
failing one of the most basic tests of decency for a human being. He was
a drug-addict and sometime drug-dealer, a swindler who preyed upon his
honest and hard-working neighbors.
And yet, the regents of UC and the historians of the UCB History
department are celebrating this violent criminal, elevating his name to
virtual sainthood. A man who hurt women. A man who hurt black women.
With the full collaboration of the UCB history department, corporate
America, most mainstream media outlets, and some of the wealthiest and
most privileged opinion-shaping elites of the USA, he has become a
culture hero, buried in a golden casket, his (recognized) family
showered with gifts and praise. Americans are being socially pressured
into kneeling for this violent, abusive misogynist. A generation of
black men are being coerced into identifying with George Floyd, the
absolute worst specimen of our race and species. [...]
(9) UC Berkeley responds: "it goes against our values as a department
and our commitment to equity and inclusion"
Anonymous Berkeley Professor Shreds BLM Injustice Narrative; Berkeley
Responds
by Tyler Durden
Sat, 06/13/2020 - 15:26
Update (06/13/2020): U.C. Berkeley's history department has issued a
statement regarding the anonymous letter, and instead of addressing - or
inviting a vigorous debate over its content, Berkeley's response
validates one of the letter's core claims that dissent outside "a
tightly policed, narrow discourse" is not welcome.
"An anonymous letter has been circulating, purportedly written by a
@UCBHistory professor. We have no evidence that this letter was written
by a History faculty member," the UC Berkeley History department tweeted
Friday evening," adding "We condemn this letter: it goes against our
values as a department and our commitment to equity and inclusion."
An anonymous letter has been circulating, purportedly written by a
@UCBHistory professor. We have no evidence that this letter was written
by a History faculty member. We condemn this letter: it goes against our
values as a department and our commitment to equity and inclusion.
— UC Berkeley History (@UCBHistory) June 13, 2020
We would expect no less than this lazy broad brushstroke from an
institution which shuns the rational discourse of 'problematic' topics.
Disgraceful.
This tweet confirms everything the letter rightly condemned.
Astonishing that your department has been so thoroughly corrupted that
you don't care how this stance will be viewed by, well, history.
— Crony Capitalist (@CronyCapital) June 13, 2020 * * *
An anonymous history professor at U.C. Berkeley has penned an open
letter against the current narratives of racial injustice underpinning
the BLM movement and ongoing protests over the death of George Floyd.
Its authenticity was confirmed by Kentucky State University Assistant
Professor of Political Science, Wilfred Reilley, who says he was sent a
copy of the letter along with Stanford University economist Thomas Sowell.
I can confirm that the letter in the thread below was sent to me and Tom
Sowell. It's really worth reading, in a time of widespread panic.
— Wilfred Reilly (@wil_da_beast630) June 12, 2020 Reprinted in its
entirety below (emphasis ours) via @tracybeanz:
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