Douglas Murray's The Strange Death of Europe

The following are extracts (for review purposes) from The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, Douglas Murray, 2017-Jun:

Introduction

"In Die Welt von Gestern (The World of Yesterday), first published in 1942, Stefan Zweig wrote...'I felt that Europe, in its state of derangement, had passed its own death sentence—our sacred home of Europe, both the cradle and the Parthenon of Western civilisation.'...

"Western Europeans have lost what the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno famously called the 'tragic sense of life'. They have forgotten what Zweig and his generation so painfully learnt: that everything you love, even the greatest and most cultured civilisations in history, can be swept away by people who are unworthy of them. [O]ne of the few ways to avoid this tragic sense of life is to push it away through a belief in the tide of human progress....

"More than any other continent or culture in the world today, Europe is now deeply weighed down with guilt for its past. [T]here is also the problem in Europe of an existential tiredness[,] and a feeling that perhaps for Europe the story has run out and a new story must be allowed to begin. [T]he replacement of large parts of the European populations by other people[,] we seemed to think, was as good as a rest.

"[W]e know that we Europeans cannot become whatever we like. We cannot become Indian or Chinese[.] If being 'European' is not about race—as we hope it is not—then it is even more imperative that it is about 'values'. This is what makes the question 'What are European values?' so important....

"While unsure of ourselves at home we made final efforts at extending our values abroad. Yet...we seemed to make things worse and ended up in the wrong. [W]e...lost faith in our ability to advance...human rights...abroad. At some stage it began to seem possible that what had been called 'the last utopia'—the first universal system that divorced the rights of man from the say of gods or tyrants—might comprise a final failed European aspiration." – pp. 1–7

Chapter 10:  The tyranny of guilt

"[In] 2016 one Kuwaiti official, Fahad al-Shalami, explained in an interview on France 24 why Gulf countries like his were refusing asylum even to Syrian refugees: 'Kuwait and the Gulf countries are expensive, and are not suitable for refugees,' he explained. 'They are suitable for workers. The transportation is expensive. The cost of living in Kuwait is high, whereas the cost of living in Lebanon or Turkey is perhaps cheaper. Therefore it is much easier to pay the refugees [(]to stay there[)]. At the end of the day, you cannot accept other people, who come from a different atmosphere, from a different place. These are people who suffer from psychological problems, from trauma.' You cannot just place them in the Gulf societies, he explained....

"What is strange is that the default attitude of Europe is to agree that the Gulf States and other societies are fragile, whereas Europe is endlessly malleable." – pp. 158–9

Chapter 11:  The pretence of repatriation

"[O]n the evening of Friday 13 November[,] 2015[,] Paris was rocked by three hours of coordinated terrorist attacks....

"Yet two days after the Paris attacks...European Commission President...Jean-Claude Juncker insisted at a press conference in Antalya, Turkey, 'There are no grounds to revise Europe's policies on the matter of refugees.' He went on to explain that the Paris attackers were 'criminals', not 'refugees or asylum-seekers', adding, 'I would invite those in Europe who try to change the migration agenda we adopted. I would like to remind them to be serious about this and not to give in to these basic reactions which I do not like.' " – pp. 185–6

Chapter 12:  Learning to live with it

"[I]n the United Kingdom...in 2013 (under a Conservative majority government)...efforts to arrest illegal migrant workers were met with fierce and forceful opposition on the streets by left-wing campaigners." – pp. 201–2

Chapter 13:  Tiredness

The dreams we dream

"It may be, as [t]he English atheist theologian Don Cupitt wrote in 2008[,] that 'the modern Western secular world is itself a Christian creation'....The post-war culture of human rights that insists upon itself and is talked of by its devotees as though it were a faith does itself appear to be an attempt to implement a secular version of the Christian conscience....

"Existential tiredness is not a problem only because it produces a listless type of life. It is a problem because it can allow almost anything to follow in its wake....

"The effect...when the people who know the answers, whether artists, philosophers or clergy, keep being shown to be wrong is far from energising....

"The fascist dream...never carried the intellectual class as communism did, but...though it crashed sooner[,] the devastation it left was as great." – pp. 213–8

Icarus Fallen

"In Le Souci Contemporain (1996), translated into English as Icarus Fallen[,] the French philosopher Chantal Delsol...suggested that the condition of modern European man was the condition that Icarus would have been in[,] had he survived the fall. We Europeans had kept trying to reach the sun, flew too close[,] and hurtled back down to earth. [B]ut we somehow survived[.] All around us we have the wreckage—metaphorical and real—of all our dreams, our religions, our political ideologies and a thousand other aspirations, all of which in their turn have proved false. And though we have no more illusions or ambitions left, yet we are still here. So what do we do?" – p. 221

Chapter 16:  The feeling that the story has run out

"It is as well to admit when your enemies [see weakness. W]e remain among the only cultures on earth [that are] so open to self-criticism and the recording of our own iniquities[.] But on one single thing it is possible that our critics are onto something....

"The problem...runs something like this: that life in modern liberal democracies is to some extent thin or shallow[. L]iberal democracy uniquely gives [us] the opportunity...to pursue our own conception of happiness[. M]ost people find deep meaning[; b]ut there are questions that remain, which have always been central to each of us[:]

" 'What am I doing here? What is my life for? Does it have any purpose beyond itself?'

"[The German legal scholar] Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde...in the 1960s...posed [a] dilemma[:] 'Does the free, secularised state exist on the basis of normative presuppositions that it itself cannot guarantee?'...One answer—which dominated in Europe for the final years of the last century—was to deny this history, to insist that what we have is normal and to forget the tragic facts of civilisation as well as life. Intelligent and cultured people appeared to see it as their duty not to shore up and protect the culture in which they had grown up, but rather to deny it, assail it, or otherwise bring it low....

"The way in which science, the dominant voice of our time[,] speaks to us and of us is itself revealing. At the opening of his 1986 work The Blind Watchmaker Richard Dawkins wrote...that...science has...solved [the] mystery [of] our own existence[. But] most of us still do not feel solved. We do not live our lives and experience our existence as solved beings. On the contrary we still experience ourselves, as our ancestors did, as torn and contradictory beings, vulnerable to aspects of ourselves and our world that we cannot understand.

"[F]ew people rejoice in being referred to as mere animals. [W]e...know that we are more than animals and that to live merely as animals would be to degrade this thing we are. Whether we are right or wrong in this, it is something we intuit. [W]e [also] know that we are more than mere consumers....We rebel...because we know that we are not only these things. We know we are something else, even if we do not know what that else is.

"[F]or real believers the question will always be, 'Why do you not just believe?'...Meantime the non-religious in our culture are deeply fearful of any debate or discussion that they think will make some concession to the religious, thereby allowing faith-based discussion to flood back into the public space." – pp. 258–67

Chapter 17:  The end

"In September 2016...I had an opportunity to speak with a Member of...the Bundestag...Parliament. [T]he realisation struck[,] that...even the most pro-Merkel, pro-migrant...MPs...have their snapping point...He was willing to plead the plight of all migrants[—]also condemn all the borders[—]and simultaneously be willing to pretend that the flow had slowed of its own volition. This was the way in which his conscience and his survival instinct had found room for an agreement. By pretending that the migrants simply weren't coming whilst supporting a policy that had stopped them from coming, it was possible to remain a humanitarian and remain in power." – pp. 285–8

Chapter 18:  What might have been

"[S]hould Europe be a place to which anybody in the world can move and call themselves at home? Should it be a haven for absolutely anybody in the world fleeing war? Is it the job of Europeans to provide a better standard of living in our continent to anybody in the world who wants it?...

"Chancellor Merkel, her contemporaries and her predecessors...could have consulted Aristotle[.] They were trying to weigh up the balance not between good and evil but between competing virtues: on this occasion 'justice' and 'mercy'. When such virtues appear to be in contravention, Aristotle suggests, it is because one of them is being misunderstood....The absent party in all this, for whom justice was never considered, were the peoples of Europe. They were people to whom things were done, whose own appeals—even when they could be voiced—were not listened to.

"In the great migration movements the decisions of Merkel and her predecessors had overridden all their rights to justice....

"Edmund Burke...in the eighteenth century made the central conservative insight that a culture and a society are not things run for the convenience of the people who happen to be here right now, but [are instead] a deep pact between the dead, the living and those yet to be born.

"[In] the post-war period...Europe had already failed the easiest part of the immigration conundrum...out of personal comfort, lazy thinking and political ineptitude. [I]t also failed the harder test, which was the migration conundrum that Chancellor Merkel confronted in her live televised discussion with the solitary Lebanese teenager[,] but then buckled under when it came to the untold millions [(strangely, because] most people...abhor the crowds but pity the individual). She had misunderstood the virtues. Merkel could have been merciful to those in need whilst not being unjust to the peoples of Europe....

"The first way [to do this] would have been to go right back to the basics of the problem: principally the question of who Europe is for. Those who believe it is for the world have never explained...why Europeans going anywhere else in the world is colonialism whereas the rest of the world coming to Europe is just and fair. Nor have they ever suggested that the migration movement has any end other than the turning of Europe into a place belonging to the world, with other countries remaining the home of the people of those countries. They have also only succeeded to the extent [that] they have[,] by lying to the public and concealing their aims. Had the leaders of Western Europe told their publics in the 1950s or at any point since that the aim of migration was to fundamentally alter the concept of Europe and make it a home for the world, then the people of Europe would most likely have risen up and overthrown those governments.

"[A] policy upon which European leaders could have embarked from the beginning was to ensure that asylum claims were processed outside Europe....

"Australian officials have said in private since the beginning of the current European crisis that this is the way in which Europe will have to deal with its crisis at some point anyway....

"Another solution would be a concerted Europe-wide effort to organise the deportation of all those found to have no asylum claim. This is easier said than done: millions of people who are currently in Europe have no legal right to be here. Some might welcome assistance to return home, having found themselves working for gangs or otherwise finding life in Europe less appealing than they had expected. Still, this would be a monumental task to undertake....Governments['] publics—including legitimate asylum seekers—need...to hear the language of exclusion....

"In order to bring an end to the ongoing migration problem and turn around the challenge that already exists, it would also be necessary for Europe's political leaders to acknowledge where they have gone wrong in the past....They might concede that...diversity...in large numbers...would irrevocably end society as we know it. They might then stress that they do not actually want to fundamentally change our societies. This would be a painful concession for the political class[.]

"[T]hose who have actually killed Muslims in Britain have been overwhelmingly other Muslims murdering them for doctrinal reasons....

"Of...greater concern to the majority is the observation that many of those who come to Europe...seem happy about transforming European societies....But most Europeans do not appreciate this common glee over radical changes to their society[.]

"Pope Benedict implored Europeans to behave 'as though God exists'[.]

"At the root of such appeals is an awareness that Europeans are unlikely to simply find or come up with another culture or a better culture....

"If the culture that shaped Western Europe has no part in its future, then there are other cultures and traditions that will surely step in to take its place. To re-inject our own culture with some sense of a deeper purpose need not be a proselytising mission, but simply an aspiration of which we should be aware. Of course, it is always possible that the tide of faith that began its long, withdrawing roar of retreat in the nineteenth century will come back in again." – pp. 294–307

Chapter 19:  What will be

"There has been little meaningful acknowledgement among the political class that what it has done during the decades of mass immigration is in any way regrettable. There is no evidence that they would wish to reverse that policy. And there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that they could not do so even if they wished to....

"And so in time, during the present century, in the major cities first and then across whole countries, our societies will finally become those 'nations of immigrants' that we pretended...we always were....

"For the time being most politicians will continue to find the short-term benefits of taking the 'compassionate', 'generous' and 'open' course of action to be personally preferable[.]

"So they will continue to ensure that Europe is the only place in the world that belongs to the world....Western Europe will at best resemble a large-scale version of the United Nations. Many people will welcome this[.]

"The less well off will have to accept that they do not live in a place that is their home but in one that is a home for the world. And whilst incomers will be encouraged to pursue their traditions and lifestyles, Europeans whose families have been here for generations will most likely continue to be told that theirs is an oppressive, outdated tradition[.]

"European society today is ever less recognisable, and what chances it had to sustain the whole were lost when it chose to wage a war on its own design. The pieces...that were added were not carefully selected and did not fit the old shapes....

"Nonetheless, the political leadership of Europe will go around and around the same failed and contradictory ideas and repeat the same [fundamental] mistake....

"During the migration crisis it was not only 'open borders' activists who believed that bringing the whole world on board was a sensible policy. It was members of the Greek government and of governing parties across Europe. Some believed it as ideology. Others simply could find no reasonable moral way to deny entry to the world's inhabitants....

"Promised throughout their lifetimes that the changes were temporary, that the changes were not real, or that the changes did not signify anything, Europeans discovered that in the lifespan of people now alive they would become minorities in their own countries....When the Vienna Institute of Demography confirmed that by the middle of this century a majority of Austrians under the age of 15 would be Muslims, the Austrian people were—like everybody else in Europe—simply expected to ignore or wish away their own cultural end point. The dark...Bertolt...Brechtian joke [which] he wrote in his 1953 poem 'The Solution'...appeared after all to be true: the political elites had found their publics wanting and had solved the problem by dissolving the people and appointing another people in their place.

"What is more, it had all been done on the laughable presumption that while all cultures are equal, European cultures are less equal than others. And that a person who favoured the culture of Germany over that of Eritrea had, in the most gracious interpretation, an out-of-date or ill-informed opinion, and in the more common view was simply an out-and-out racist....

"For if there was any chance at all of this working it would be that the new Europeans from Africa or anywhere else in the world would swiftly learn to be as European as any Europeans in the past....Only in 2016 did it become clear that...the name 'Mohammed'...in all its variants had indeed become the most popular boy's name in England and Wales. At which point the official line changed to 'And so what?' It was implied that...Britain will remain British even when most of the men are called Mohammed, in the same way that Austria will remain Austria even when most of the men are called Mohammed.

"[N]early all the evidence appears to be pointing the opposite way. [S]imply consider the minorities within the minorities. Who...are the Muslims in Europe who are most under threat. Are they the radicals?...There is no evidence to suggest th[is]. Even groups whose graduates go on to behead Europeans are taken on their own estimation inside Europe to be 'human rights' groups[.] This is why by 2015 more British Muslims were fighting for Isis than for the British armed forces.

"The people who are at risk and the people who are most criticised both from within Muslim communities in Europe and among the wider population are in fact the people who fell hardest for the integration promises of liberal Europe....And in Britain it is not those who preach the murder of apostates to packed mosques up and down the country who draw British Muslim ire and who consequently have to be careful about their security. Instead, it is a progressive British Muslim of Pakistani heritage like Maajid Nawaz, an activist and columnist, whose only mistake was in believing Britain when it presented itself as a society that still wanted legal equality and one law for all....In every Western European country it is the Muslims who have come here or been born here and stood up for our own ideals—including our ideals of free speech—who have been castigated by their co-religionists and carefully dropped by what was once 'polite' European society....

"In 2014 a leaked report from Britain's Ministry of Defence revealed that military planners believed that 'an increasingly multicultural Britain' and 'increasingly diverse nation' meant that British military intervention in foreign countries was becoming impossible....

"Just one consequence of having 'diversity' and 'difference' rather than 'colour blindness' and proper integration as a goal is that Europe in the twenty-first century is obsessed with race.

"[I]f you have many people from various parts of the whole world living in close proximity[,] it is probable that various of the world's problems will descend on those communities at some time. And the world will always have problems. In the meantime it is not certain that the European publics will forever...resist the issue of race. If every other group and movement in society is able to identify race and talk explicitly about it, why not the Europeans? In the same way that it is not inevitable that Europeans will forever be persuaded of our historical and hereditary iniquity, so it is possible that we might eventually say that racial politics cannot be for everyone else but not for us....

"Even now the onus still remains on Europeans to solve the world's problems by bringing in people from many parts of the world. Only we, when we say 'enough', are castigated and then troubled by such castigation[.] Iran['s] Hezbollah among other militias ha[s] been fighting for Iranian interests in Syria since 2011[. Yet i]n September 2015 Iran's President Rouhani had the gall to lecture the Hungarian ambassador to Iran over Hungary's alleged 'shortcomings' in the refugee crisis....

"Although recent history shows that politicians certainly can go on ignoring majority public opinion for decades, it is not inevitable that such a situation will continue indefinitely....

"Can governments continue to dodge the consequences of their own actions and inactions? Perhaps in some countries they will. Others may cynically switch track in a second. During this crisis I spoke with one French politician of the centre right [regarding] his...party's immigration policies[.] Asked how he would deal with a particular set of challenges to do with people who were already nationals, he replied with remarkable nonchalance that it would 'probably be necessary to change some bits of the constitution'....

"Perhaps in one European country in the near future a party of the kind previously described as 'far right' will come to power. Perhaps a party even further to the right will then come to power at some point later. One thing is certain, which is that if the politics are to turn bad it will be because...the rhetoric [and then] the ideas turned increasingly bad....In the wake of Cologne[, s]treet movements began to talk of all arrivals into Europe as 'rapefugees'. In Paris I met an elected official who referred to all migrants as 'refu-jihadists'. [S]uch deterioration in the language seems inevitable after a period of dishonesty from the other direction....

"Europeans are left in the position of not believing sufficiently in their own story and being distrustful of their past whilst knowing that there are other stories moving in[,] that they do not want. Everywhere a feeling is growing of all options being closed off. All routes out seem to have been tried before and appear impossible to venture into again. Perhaps the only country in Europe that could lead the continent out of such stagnation would be Germany....

"In the meantime elected officials and bureaucrats continue to do everything they can to make the situation as bad as possible as fast as possible. In October 2015 there was a public meeting in the small city of Kassel in the state of Hesse. Eight hundred immigrants were due to arrive in the following days[.] As a video recording of the meeting shows, citizens were calm, polite but concerned. Then at a certain point their district president, one Walter Lübcke, calmly informs them that anybody who does not agree with the policy is 'free to leave Germany'. You can see and hear on the tape the intake of breath, amazed laughter, hoots and finally shouts of anger. Whole new populations are being brought into their country and they are being told that if they don't like this they are always free to leave? Do no politicians in Europe realise what could happen if they continue to treat the European people like this?

"Apparently not. Nor do all of the arrivals. In October 2016 Der Freitag and Huffington Post Deutschland both published an article by an 18-year-old Syrian migrant called Aras Bacho. In the piece he complained that the migrants in Germany were 'fed up' with the 'angry' German people who 'insult and agitate' and are 'unemployed racists'. Among other imprecations he continued, 'We refugees...do not want to live in the same country with you. You can, and I think you should, leave Germany. Germany does not fit you, why do you live here?...Look for a new home.'

"On New Year's Eve 2016[,] there were...sex attacks in...Innsbruck and Augsburg. Police in Cologne were heavily criticised by MPs from the SPD and Green parties...for allegedly 'racially profiling' those seeking access to the city's main square in an attempt to prevent a repeat of the previous year's atrocities. [Just o]ne year after Germany had awoken to part of its new reality, the censors had returned and resumed control. On the same night in France just under 1,000 cars were set alight—a 17% rise on the same night one year before. The French Interior Ministry described the night as having gone off 'without any major incident.'

"Day by day the continent of Europe is not only changing but is losing any possibility of a soft landing in response to such change. An entire political class have failed to appreciate that many of us who live in Europe love the Europe that was ours. We do not want our politicians, through weakness, self-hatred, malice, tiredness or abandonment to change our home into an utterly different place....If they do so change it then many of us will regret this quietly. Others will regret it less quietly. [F]or Europeans[, p]risoners of the past[,] there seem finally to be no decent answers to the future. Which is how the fatal blow will finally land." – pp. 308–20

Copyright (c) 2022 Mark D. Blackwell.

Frank Furedi's What's Happened To The University?

The following are extracts (for review purposes) from What's Happened To The University? A sociological exploration of its infantilisation, Frank Furedi, 2016-Oct:

Introduction

Socialisation through validation

"[A]s early as 1979[,] the American sociologist Alvin Gouldner...drew attention to the difficulties...parents faced in...carrying out...the task of socialising their children, stating that 'parental, particularly paternal, authority is increasingly vulnerable[,] and is thus less able to insist that children respect societal or political authority outside [of] the home.' He claimed that teachers in higher education were increasingly involved in socialising their students into its [own] values....

"For some time now it has been evident that parents and schools have been struggling with the transmission of values and rules of behaviour to young people. In part, this problem was caused by the lack [of] confidence of older generations in the values into which [they were] socialised by their parents. More broadly, Western society has become estranged from the values that it once held dear, and has found it difficult to provide its adult members with a compelling narrative for socialisation....

"Lack of clarity about the transmission of values has led to a search for alternatives.

"[T]here has been a perceptible shift from instilling values[, over] to the provision of validation. The project of affirming children and raising their self-esteem has been actively promoted by parents as well as [by] schools. This emphasis on validation has run in tandem with the custom of a risk-averse regime of childrearing. The (unintended) consequence of this has been...to extend the phase of dependence of young people on adult society. The extension of the phase of dependence is reinforced by the considerable difficulties that society has in providing young people with a persuasive account of what it means to be an adult." – pp. 5–6

The return of in loco parentis

"[M]ental fragility, and [a] disposition to emotional pain, often become...integral to the ways in which some students make sense of their identity. It is how they have been socialised to perceive themselves....

"Advocates of the etiquette of paternalism...see themselves as...'aware', 'respectful'[,] and emotionally and morally attuned individuals. They perceive themselves as 'enlightened' in contrast to their opponents...who, they claim, are steeped in outdated, prejudiced traditional values. Yet if there is an age-old[,] traditional value, it is that of paternalism." – p. 9

The deification of safety

"Unlike its censorious ancestors, [t]he trigger-warning crusade...is not particularly interested in the content of the literary text: its entire focus is about the potential effect that a book may have on an individual. This speaks to a narcissistic culture, in which the affirmation of 'my feelings' is seen as [a] sufficient reason to reorganise course content. The subordination of literary content to the arbitrary emotional reactions of students is likely to have a chilling impact on the quality of campus life....

"In contrast to the fragile child in need of trigger warnings, the English revolutionary poet Milton posited the ideal of the fit reader. He believed that readers 'possessed a fundamental capacity to judge, endowing them with importance and dignity'." – p. 12

Entitlement for validation

"In wider society and in higher education, the demand for recognition serves as the central motif for the politicisation of identity. That is why demands for trigger warnings or safe spaces to protect students from emotional damage are frequently coupled with calls to recognise and affirm the cultural identity of those asking for them. [T]he call for trigger warnings is as much a demand for the validation of a student's identity as [it is a demand] for a health warning....

"Students who demand to be validated are not simply asking it for their individual selves but [rather] for the culture or the lifestyle with which they identify. The individual psychological need for an identity is sublimated through culture and lifestyle." – pp. 12–3

The drivers of the paternalistic etiquette in higher education

"Libertarian paternalism is...wedded to the belief that people cannot be relied on to make important decisions concerning their future. [C]ontinually[, c]ommentators argue that...individuals lack the capacity for autonomous action. Often, people are portrayed as unwitting victims of the media, powerless to resist its subliminal messages—so they are kindly offered therapeutic censorship....

"The inference conveyed by this negative assessment of people's mental capacities is that because citizens cannot exercise independent judgment, they require someone else to do it for them....Because it assumes that people lack the moral resources to know what [is] in their best interest, paternalism infantilises its targets....

Paternalistic attitudes that are current throughout society have subjected universities to their influence.

"[T]he present-day mood of illiberalism is not underpinned by a self-conscious political project. The current issues raised on campuses tend to be not political but prepolitical, and they often...refer to conditions that are psychological. There is an important shift from the domain of ideas to that of emotions when people state...'I am offended' instead of 'I disagree'." – pp. 14–5

Chapter 1: The weaponisation of emotions

"[T]herapy culture has come to exercise [a] powerful authority...over higher education[.]" – p. 17

Chapter 2: The harms of the academy

"The current zeitgeist[, a] culture of fear[,] has as its premise the belief that humanity faces dangers that are hitherto unparalleled." – p. 36

Chapter 3: Culture war

"In the 1960s and early 1970s, activists tended to identify themselves through...the social causes they fought for....But today, political affiliations have receded to the background and cultural, religious, sexual, gender or lifestyle-related identities have come [to] the fore." – p. 53

Chapter 4: Safe space: a quarantine against judgment

A crusade against critical thinking

"[T]he educationalist Robert Boostrom...has pointed out that from 'Plato through Rousseau to Dewey', the education of students has led to the painful experience of 'giving up a former condition in favour of a new way of seeing things'. He asks, 'being interrogated by Socrates would evoke many feelings, but would a feeling of safety be among them?'

"[W]hat is probably the greatest shortcoming of the educational practice...of safe[-]space policy [is] that it runs directly against the grain of critical thinking." – p. 78

Chapter 5: Verbal purification: the diseasing of free speech

Loss of cultural valuation for free speech

"The task of protecting the individual from psychological pain is perceived as logically prior to upholding the right to free speech....

"It is now an article of faith on campuses that speakers who espouse allegedly racist, misogynist or homophobic views should not be allowed to speak....

"Those who are concerned about state intervention into public debate are looked upon as having an old-fashioned and irrelevant obsession. One critic notes that 'free speech advocacy is steeped in the historical context' and that, therefore, the First Amendment is 'a direct expression' of the historical 'fear of state power'. His implicit conclusion is that it is therefore no big deal and writes with apparent puzzlement that for 'First Amendment absolutists, state power is inherently suspect.'...

"As [the] free speech advocate Steven Gey...points out, what 'most offends critical race theorists' is the

• presumption that the intellectual 'consumers' in the market place are free actors, capable of intelligently and fairly considering competing political ideas, policy proposals and value systems before forming conclusions of their own about the direction in which the country and its government should move.

"In this model, mental enslavement trumps the capacity for autonomy. The inference conveyed by this assessment of people's mental capacities is that because citizens cannot exercise independent judgment, they require someone else to do it for them." – pp. 102–104

Chapter 6: Microaggression: the disciplining of manners and thought

"Those accused of committing an act of microaggression are not simply condemned for their words but also for the hidden meaning and intent that might lurk beneath their remarks. The concept of microaggression provides a narrative that helps [to] interpret the ontological insecurity faced by an individual as the outcome of other people's acts of bias and injustice....

"The term 'microaggression' is associated with the publications of counselling psychologist Derald Wing Sue....

"People accused of this misdemeanour...are indicted for their unconscious thoughts." – p. 107

Chapter 7: The quest for a new etiquette

Bypassing moral sensibilities

"Like the promoters of verbal purification, advocates of the theory of microaggression are engaged in constant moralising but [again] in a form that lacks a foundation in a system of morality....

"Through the use of idioms of vagueness, the commanding rhetoric of higher education avoids engaging explicitly with the principles of right and wrong and the system of values that underpin morality. Instead of cultivating its own positive antitraditionalist morality, it opts for the strategy of moralising—which is the self-righteous condemnation of inappropriate thoughts and behaviour.

"[T]he sociologist Alvin Gouldner['s] study, The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class (1979), offers a compelling sociological explanation for the ascendancy of an antimoral and antitraditional language and ideology in American universities. Writing in the late 1970s, Gouldner pointed to the role of what he called the new class of intellectual and knowledge workers in promoting the antitraditionalist turn in society, and especially inside the university. The exercise of the monopoly that this group had over education and expertise unleashed forces that worked towards the deauthorisation of traditional and cultural authority. Gouldner contends that this development was [further] facilitated by the decline of paternal authority within the family. The twin forces of women's emancipation and the expansion of education in the context of growing prosperity weakened paternal authority, which in turn damaged the capacity of the prevailing system of socialisation to communicate the legacy and the values of the past....

"Parental authority in general, and paternal authority in particular, found it difficult to impose and reproduce 'its social values and political ideologies in their children'....Gouldner...argued that schools and, chiefly, universities, [instead] assumed a central role in the socialisation of young people, claiming the right to educate young people in line with their enlightened opinions and, even in schools, sensing no 'obligation, to reproduce parental values in their children'....

"As a result of this development, 'public educational systems' bec[a]me a 'major cosmopolitanizing influence on [their] students, with a corresponding distancing from localistic interests and values'." – pp. 128–31

The contestation of values

"On university campuses and beyond, the suspicion directed at [both] normative values and the language of morality is paralleled by the attempt to moralise problems that are connected to cultural identity, lifestyles and the prepolitical sphere of private life....

"Through the moralisation of new issues, supporters of cultural politics attempt to give meaning to human experience." – p. 133

Turning consent on its head

"Oregon State University announced in the spring of 2016 that it plans to introduce a new training programme for its new intake of undergraduates[.] The course outline indicates that students will 'learn how...to advance the values of the OSU community'. Th[is] is represented through the neutral and technical language of a 'learning outcome'....

"Training students to advance the preexisting 'values of the OS[U] community' raises the question of how much opportunity is available for undergraduates to develop, explore and advance their own individual values. And what happens to students who may wish to advance values that contradict or conflict with those promoted by the Social Justice Learning Module? The course outline conveys the imperious assumption that the values...it teaches are beyond...question. Therefore, they must be learned and, even more importantly, must be lived by every member of the university. As in an old-school theological institution, not believing in the Truth is not an option. Moral policing is now conducted through the technocratic language of training. The trainer in the skills of the new etiquette serves as the functional equivalent of the old-school theologian." – pp. 142–3

Chapter 8: Trigger warnings: the performance of awareness

Rapid accommodation

"The academic community is more concerned about the use of trigger warnings than it is about most of the other paternalistic practices that have been imposed on universities in recent decades." – p. 151

Sensitivity on demand

"Once the teaching of an academic topic becomes subordinate to a criterion that is external to it—such as the value of sensitivity—it risks losing touch with the integrity of its subject matter." – p. 159

The dangers of reading

"Ultimately, trigger warnings degrade the spirit of artistic endeavour." – p. 160

Intellectual paternalism

"[A]cademic teaching presumes that the people sitting in the lecture hall or in a seminar are not children, but young adults....By the time young people enter the university, their personal reactions have to be subordinated to the need to master intellectually demanding issues—regardless of the uncomfortable challenges they pose....

"The use of trigger warnings is particularly unhelpful for establishing a climate that fosters the habit of free inquiry and risk taking....Trigger alerts...provide an opt-out clause for students struggling to decide between making easy and difficult choices. One of the least discussed, but most damaging, consequences of the regime of intellectual paternalism is its effect on the way that students discuss and debate amongst themselves. Students frequently acknowledge that they find it difficult to discuss sensitive issues because they fear putting a foot wrong and offending their peers....In the current climate of intolerance towards 'insensitivity', there is little cultural valuation of a student who wishes to express a view that is controversial or unpopular.

"The advocacy of trigger warnings personalises academic learning[.] The privileging of the personal emotional response[s] of students creates a serious obstacle to the conduct of the free exchange of opinion through intellectual debate....A genuine clash of views ought not to be personal in an academic setting, and a serious academic institution teaches its members how not to be offended by uncomfortable ideas. The conduct of a robust debate is not always consistent with the idealisation of sensitivity." – pp. 162–3

Chapter 9: Why academic freedom must not be rationed: an argument against the freedom–security trade-off

Academic freedom—the threat from within

"[T]he cultural climate of universities has changed from one that is welcoming of ambiguity and the risks associated with the quest for knowledge[,] to one that is preoccupied with the certainty offered by process and rules....If academics can be told what words they should use in their course material on [values] learning outcomes, then why kick up a fuss when guidelines on microaggression and speech lay down the law on what words to avoid?...

"The University of Derby's 'Code of Practice for Use of Language'...warns that the 'university recognises that individuals are responsible...but expects line managers to help staff carry out the terms of this policy'." – p. 175

Academic freedom devalued through the sanctification of other values

"[W]ithout the right to offend, academic freedom becomes emptied of its experimental and truth-seeking content....

"There are powerful cultural forces at work that encourage the perception that the policing of academic freedom is not what it really is—the coercive regulation of everyday communication and the repression and stigmatisation of certain ideas. From this perspective, the regulation of academic life is not perceived as a form of authoritarian intrusion but as a sensible and sensitive measure designed to protect the vulnerable from pain.

"[U]niversity administrators have promoted the value of civility as an antidote to uncivil—that is, robust—free speech. In September 2014, Chancellor Nicholas Dirks emailed members of the University of California at Berkeley[.]

"Dirks's email warned that 'when issues are inherently divisive, controversial and capable of arousing strong feelings, the commitment to free speech and expression can lead to division and divisiveness that undermines a community's foundation.'...As he explained:

• Specifically, we can only exercise our right to free speech insofar as we feel safe and respected in doing so, and this in turn requires that people treat each other with civility. Simply put, courteousness and respect in words and deeds are basic preconditions to any meaningful exchange of ideas. In this sense, free speech and civility are two sides of a single coin—the coin of open, democratic society....

"Dirks's avowal of free speech is rendered meaningless by the conditions he places on its exercise.

"Fortunately, the Council of the University of California Faculty Associations took issue with the meaning of Dirks's call for civility, declaring that the right to free speech is not 'contingent on the notion that anyone else needs to listen, agree, speak back, or "feel safe" '.

"[T]he balancing of these two values tends to be at the expense of academic freedom." – pp. 177–8

Academic freedom becomes a second-order value

"In 'A message from the leadership at Penn State', [the u]niversity [a]dministration communicated its version of the qualified defence of academic freedom:

• Debate and disagreement are critical constructs in the role of universities in testing ideas and promoting progress on complex issues. But, the leaders of your University at every level, from the administration, faculty, staff and students, are unanimous in deploring the erosion of civility associated with our discourse.

"[T]he manner in which this argument is framed indicates a preference for civility over free speech, concluding with the words:

• Respect is a core value at Penn State University. We ask you to consciously choose civility and to support those whose words and actions serve to promote respectful disagreement and thereby strengthen our community.

"[T]he statement...is conspicuously silent on where free speech and academic freedom stand...in the hierarchy of values.

"Despite the formal adherence of institutions of higher education to the ideal of academic freedom, this principle has in practice become a second-order value. In formal statements on the subject, academic freedom appears to be valued [only] instrumentally[,] as essential for intellectual and scientific advance. Its begrudging acceptance as useful for the development [of] scholarship coexists with ambivalence towards its idealisation as a foundational principle.

"[A]cademic blogger...Robin Marie...is scathing of liberal academics who are not prepared to acknowledge that they, too, regard their values as more important than academic freedom.

"Marie points out that so-called liberal academics frequently discriminate against their conservative colleagues. Drawing attention to the double standard that prevails in higher education regarding the employment of conservative academics, Marie writes:

• Academic institutions, moreover, are spaces that are morally policed—it is not a coincidence, nor due solely to the weak evidential basis of their positions, that only a minority of professors in the liberal arts are conservative. Declining to hire someone, publish their paper, or chat them up at a conference are exercises in exclusion and shame which those in academia, nearly as much as any other community, participate in.

"Marie's allusion to the practice of marginalising conservative academics in the social sciences and the arts—a practice of which he approves—serves the purpose of reinforcing his argument that academic freedom is not allocated impartially and is a liberal shibboleth. For this advocate of social justice, academic freedom deserves to be treated with pragmatism and cynicism.

"[A]lthough [c]ritics of the 'liberal shibboleth' of academic freedom...are happy to deny its application to their opponents, they fervently uphold their own right to academic freedom....

"Until recent times, critics of academic freedom tended to argue that, although they regarded it as a very fine principle, they felt...there were clear limits to its application. [But i]n the current era, critics of academic freedom are openly scathing about the values it embodies....

"It is not surprising that many student activists lack a strong attachment to what they regard as a value that is less important than that of respect, safety, security or social justice....

"Through their socialisation[,] students entering the university already possess a low level of tolerance towards verbal slights and uncomfortable challenges. Once they become undergraduates, their sensitivities and risk-averse attitudes are validated and enhanced through the paternalistic etiquette to which they are exposed. Thankfully, many students are either untouched by this ethos or have a healthy reaction against the risk-averse paternalism that would treat them as children. However[,] they are rarely offered a genuinely tolerant and liberal counternarrative which would help them to challenge these trends. They are seldom exposed to positive accounts of academic freedom and free speech." – pp. 178–82

The trade-off between freedom and security/equity/recognition

"Often, individuals who attack the academic freedom of their foes still claim the rights it encompasses for themselves. [P]roponents of 'academic justice'...merely...call for...academic freedom['s] subordination to their own values....

"The most coherent opponents of the ideal of academic freedom are often illiberal academics and administrators who are wedded to the belief that this principle simply reinforces the marginalisation of the powerless. They claim that academic freedom is monopolised by those who possess [the] privilege and power to flourish, at the expense of those who require special protection....

"Numerous academics have pointed to the threat that a range of new antiterrorism laws, such as the American Patriot Act, pose for civil liberties. However, when a similar trade-off is proposed in relation to limiting tolerance towards offensive speech in order to protect the emotional state of members of the university community, such criticisms are conspicuous by their silence....

"The premise of the academic freedom and security trade-off is rarely spelled out in a self-conscious and explicit form, but its assumptions underpin many current controversies....

"Omar Barghouti[,] founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel[,] claim[s] that some values override those of academic freedom and therefore [the latter] can, in good conscience, be traded for some alleged benefits[.]

"[T]he British educationalist Joanne Williams suggest[s that] arguments like those advanced by Barghouti are similar to those put forward to justify exchanging freedom for the benefit of the vulnerable. Calls for free speech to be balanced against the right not to be offended, made uncomfortable or emotionally harmed, exemplify what can be best described as the securitisation of freedom.

"Arguments used for regulating academic freedom are founded on the assumption that a consistent and unwavering commitment to this principle can clash with, and undermine, the psychological well-being of members of the university. Similar arguments are widely used to restrict free speech....

"The Canadian legal scholar Lynn Smith expresses the relative character of this balancing act in the following terms:

• Should academic freedom take priority over subjective discomfort? Yes. Should promotion of equality take priority over unfettered expression of whatever may occur to an individual scholar, even when irrelevant to the subject matter, simply because it flows from his or her personal creativity? Yes.

"Smith is happy for academic freedom to take precedence over a bit of discomfort, but insists that it must give way to the promotion of equality....

"Since the beginning of modern times, assertions about the necessity of trading off freedoms for an alleged benefit have been used by critics of liberty, and these benefits have turned out to be illusory. However, the belief that human dignity and a sense of self-worth requires protection from the pain inflicted by hurtful speech is possibly the most counterproductive example of the trade-off argument. People acquire dignity and esteem through dealing with the problems that confront them, rather than through relying on the goodwill of the paternalistic university administrator.

"Trading off freedom for some alleged psychic benefit...deprive[s] freedom—in any of its forms—of moral content....As the philosopher Ronald Dworkin...argues, 'in a culture of liberty' the public 'shares a sense, almost as a matter of secular religion, that certain freedoms are in principle exempt' from the 'ordinary process of balancing and regulation'.

"[T]he principle of academic freedom is based on the presumption that people can be trusted to take risks. An academic community and wider society that is confident about its capacity to engage with uncertainty is likely to trust in its citizens' ability to use their freedoms in a responsible manner.

"Justice Louis Brandeis [wrote]:

• Those who won our independence...knew that...it is hazardous to discourage thought, hope and imagination; that fear breeds repression; that repression breeds hate, that hate menaces stable governments; that the path of safety lies in the opportunity to discuss freely supposed grievances and proposed remedies....Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech....

"When a society discourages people from taking risks, risk-taking becomes equated with irresponsible behaviour and conformism is turned into a virtue. Such a society is likely to be uncomfortable with allowing freedom to serve as a foundational value. It is for that reason that academics['] freedom has become a negotiable commodity." – pp. 182–5

Final thoughts

"The main casualties of intellectual paternalism are the students themselves. In an infantilised higher education environment they are encouraged to adopt the role of biologically mature school children. [T]hey are expected to assume the habits of risk-averse and passive individuals who need to be protected from harm. Yet the flourishing of higher education needs individuals who are ahead of their time and prepared to search for the truth, wherever it may lead and whomever it may offend.

"A serious higher education institution...teaches its members how not to take uncomfortable views personally[,] and [how] not to be offended by them....

"Universities have to reeducate themselves [so as to] presum[e] students to be young adults who possess a capacity for embracing opportunities and creating a new world. [W]e need to take students seriously[,] and expect them to be able to act as adults[,] capa[ble of] moral autonomy and independent learning." – pp. 185–6

Copyright (c) 2022 Mark D. Blackwell.

Cheryl K. Chumley's Socialists Don't Sleep

The following are extracts (for review purposes) from Socialists Don't Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall, Cheryl K. Chumley, 2020-Sept:

Dedication

"To Jesus, the hope of humanity." – p. v

Chapter  1: Forgetting Our Roots

Patrick Henry

"Patrick Henry[,] the well-respected lawyer from Hanover County[,] Virginia[, said] at his state's Second Convention[,] 'What is it that gentlemen wish?...Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?' " – p. 3

Americans Give

"This country is great because [it] is good. This country is good because [of its] moral compass shaped by God, dictated by the Bible, [and] forged by Judeo-Christian ideals....

"If churches feed the poor, the poor don't need food stamps. If nonprofits help people with disabilities, the people with disabilities don't need government handouts.

"[T]his nation's...Founding Fathers and visionaries of American exceptionalism...knew...that the link between individual or personal morality and good governance was inextricable. [T]heir...caveat[:] the republic [will] last...only so long as its people [a]re moral and virtuous." – pp. 8–11

Freedom Can Fall in a Flash

"If we forget what made America great in the first place, [i]t takes only a flash for freedom to fall. If conditions are right, it takes only a moment and the freedoms are gone.

"In early 2020[,] fears of coronavirus gripped the nation[.]

"In a...Today Show interview[,] Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases...said...a federal stay-at-home order was the best way to combat the virus. [H]e said[, 'W]e just have to do it.'

"Then again, that's a doctor's order—not the Constitution's. In America, it's supposed to be the rule of law based on a concept of individual rights[.]

"The climate that came from the 2020 government-imposed coronavirus crackdowns was one of fear, and that fear was then played by some of the leftists and globalists and anti-American forces and sources to instill even greater fear[,] and [to] exert even greater government control." – pp. 13–21

Chapter  2: Letting Democrats Disguise Their Socialism

Economic Rights

"[Although] in the spiritual realm, in the eyes of God, all His children are certainly equal and worthy of lives of success[,] all are not owed these lives simply because they're born. There is a biblical concept of work. There is a Bible-based idea of reaping and sowing....

"Economic rights are not human rights, no matter what [Vermont Senator Bernie] Sanders says, no matter how politicians masquerading as do-gooders push it. Arguing this[,] leads down a rabbit hole of deep, dark despair, absent ambitions, goals, and hopes, where the talents of the individual are stripped[: with] the seeds of greatness ripped, and even the power to think with clarity torn asunder. It's a life of tasteless collectivism [and] robotic drudgery. It's a life where the dreams of a child are choked for the good of the aggregate. It's a life that looks at struggle as an enemy to obliterate, not a challenge to beat, and that therefore wipes away all opportunities and motivations for individuals to win. It's a life devoid of spirit, with minds conditioned to believe that's the way it ought to be." – pp. 25–6

Socialist with a Small s

"Democrats...have...taken the country far down th[e] socialist-in-all-but-name road. They've done it by sly means[: by] pretending to be progressives, [and] pretending to be social justice warriors[.] They've done it by using a combination of...tactics[:] a never-ending drumroll of...tactics[:] a wearying, fatiguing[,] never-let-up all-court...press[. T]hey'll continue...for as long as they can get by with doing it.

"[T]here's been...not nearly enough...attention paid to...'socialism' with a small s—to the cultural changes that have brought on the entitlement mindsets and the national cravings for government to step in and solve all....It's only from 'socialism with a small s' that 'Socialism with a capital S' springs....

"There's the Constitution—and there's not. There's the God-given—and there's not. Th[e]se are...the standards by which all political, economic, social, and societal programs and proposals in America should be measured....

"As philosopher and writer Ayn Rand wrote in a letter in 1945: 'Fascism, Nazism, Communism and Socialism are only superficial variations of the same monstrous theme—collectivism.'

"[S]ocialism comes as a shadow—a seductive, creeping, shadowy figure promising nirvana[—]while deceiving [us] about the only end result that can come: [which is] government oppression.

"[From a] GenForward survey [in] 2018[:] 'A significant majority (61%) of Millennial Democrats express favorable views toward Socialism.'...

"Th[is] finding...underscore[s] the ramrodding of socialism into American society that's yet to come...as youth reach adulthood and assume positions of power and leadership[.]" – pp. 27–30

Democrats, Party of the Socialists

"[A]ll of today's Democrats, Democratic Socialists, [and] progressives[,] will, unchallenged, bring about the utter collapse of America, the total demise of individual rights[:] the choking[,] communist fists of big government control.

" '[W]hat all definitions [of] socialism...have in common is either the elimination of the market or its strict containment,' said Frances Fox Piven, a former DSA [(] Democratic Socialists of America [)] board member, in an interview with Vox." – pp. 31–2

Chapter  5: Allowing Wolves in Sheep's Clothing to Teach Socialism as Biblical

Jesus Wasn't a Socialist

"[The] type of ideology espoused by...Hillary Clinton[—]that families can't raise children, but only government; that communities, not individuals, are the source of America's power—[has] become the stuff of spiritual warfare for the left.

"The Bible teaches the opposite: First comes the personal relationship with God, then comes the foundation of God's creation, the family. [F]rom a biblically strengthened, morally solid family comes the community [and] the culture[.]

"If god is a god of anything[-]goes, then so, too, can be the culture. So, too, can be the government. Take away biblical[ly]-based standards, morals, and expectations of behavior, and you take away rule of law and rights and wrongs. Take [these] away[,] and you take away the Constitution.

"What's left[?] All roads lead to ultimate government control." – pp. 81–5

Pope Pius XI and Pope Francis

"In 1937...the Roman Catholic Church, in a papal letter from Pope Pius XI, called out communism[: 'T]he class struggle with its consequent violent hate and destruction takes on the aspects of a crusade for the progress of humanity.'...

"In religion[,] as in politics, the tendency [is] to call socialism something other than socialism.

"[T]he spirit of humanity [is] the drive to create. It's no coincidence socialists are often godless; creation itself comes from God." – pp. 85–90

Christian Socialism

"The lure of socialism is that it promises what the Bible teaches will only come in the afterlife: a state of true love, true equality, true justice, true peace." – p. 93

Chapter  6: Pretending as if Socialists Care About the Youth

Fear as a Tool for Change

"Socialists will pretend to care about the victims of...broken homes, all the while ignoring that it's their very policies and cultural designs that bring about the brokenness[.]

"Often, the end result is to harm the very people far leftists say they support[:] 'Trans Athletes Destroy the Meaning of Women'...wrote the Federalist in 2019. [W]omen's rights...used to be a foundational support for the socialist business[.]

"[A] flip of normalcy for the abnormal, a destruction of tradition, a scoffing of what's lawful[:] by...these...means[,] big government grabs a root and grows, turning a free society toward a socialist mentality[.]

"[This] inevitably creates a cycle of exploitation and destruction with a most[-]predictable outcome: the utter collapse of any semblance of a free society." – pp. 108–11

Chapter  7: Failing to Grasp That Not All Do-Gooders Do Good

Gifts of Money Don't a Saint Make

"The coursing of dollars from the elite flow[s] widely from foundation to organization to UN mission to globalist cause. It's a seamless transference that makes for some of the world's most powerful socialist-minded elitists all traveling [in] the same massively bureaucratic circles, all funding the same sorts of bureaucratic causes—all [remain]ing [safely] under [the] media and watchdog radars by cloaking their socialist, collectivist designs in altruistic wrappings." – p. 126

Chapter  9: Ceding the Constitution to Technology for Convenience's Sake

Universal Basic Income

"As China collects citizens' data that drives its technology development, so America must go forth with data dissemination and AI [(] artificial intelligence [)] development, too.

"We have no choice. We must win....

"The only way to slow[-]walk the constitutional demise is to...fight hard to keep countries with godless, secular despotism as their governing system from leading[,] on the world stage." – p. 169

Chapter  10: Forgetting Our History

Lies and Twisting the Truth

"Socialists do not belong in political office in a country such as America, where rights come from God, not government.

"[T]he common[-]sense, layman American's understanding of socialism...goes simply like this: It's government force....

"Since socialists like to use words as tools to confuse and hide, then the only way to beat socialists with their constant redirects and attempts to redefine history and truth is to remind everyone: Hey[!—H]ere in America, it's all about the God-given." – pp. 175–80

Yes, It Matters

"This is America, a nation where rights come from God, not government." – p. 181

Chapter  11: Missing the Links, Buying the Lies

First Socialism, Then Communism

"[S]ocialism gets it[s] wings...by way of messages about equality, justice, fairness, and helping others." – p. 188

Subtleties of "socialism" with a Small s

"[From the] Fall 2019 [article,] 'Socialism' [in] The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy[:] 'Socialists have condemned capitalism by alleging that it typically features exploitation, domination, alienation, and inefficiency....Socialists have deployed ideals and principles of equality, democracy, individual freedom, self-realization, and community or solidarity.'...

"Socialists...repeat...tired mantras based on [the] drumming up [of] envy, anger, and hate....

"Yanking the seeds of socialism before they root is imperative[. I]n this country, it's the Constitution and the notion of individual rights from God, not [from] government, that guide [us]." – pp. 190–4

The Media's Influence

"[In] 1901[, Russian revolutionary] Vladimir Lenin, in a[n] essay called 'Where to Begin,' wrote[:] 'A newspaper is what we most of all need; without it we cannot conduct that systematic, all-round propaganda and agitation, consistent in principle, which is the chief and permanent task of Social-Democracy'[.]

"In 2015...on C-SPAN['s] Washington Journal[,] the DSA's national director, Maria Svart, was...asked, 'Socialism requires that you take from some and give to the others.' [Her] response[: 'T]hat's what's happening right now under capitalism [at] Walmart. Anybody that works...hard for a boss who pays them...little and takes a lot of money in, knows...that's taking from some to give to others.'...

"Socialism is force, no matter how gently the government presents it. Svart's lie is aimed at confusing and, ultimately, conflating freedom with bondage, so that one day, America's light will be extinguished. Lies, lies, lies. This is the energy that fuels the socialist machine. Fending off socialism depends...on discerning the lies, and [on] bringing to [the] forefront those who can effectively fight for the American dream. This is why Christians are...crucial to today's political battleground." – pp. 194–200

Chapter  12: Scoffing Those Most Equipped to Save the Dream

Government-Mandated Face Masks

"From Time magazine: '[According to] Mitsutoshi Horii, a sociology professor at Japan's Shumei University[, t]he difference in [the] perception of the [face] mask comes down...to cultural norms about covering your face[:] "In social interactions in the West, you need to show your identity and make eye contact. Facial expression is very important." '

"[I]t's th[e] unthinking quality of the...coronavirus...face[-]mask craze...that's most concerning....It suggests a choking of reason and sound thinking [in order] to give [to] others feelings of security and comfort—no matter how false the premise upon which those warm...feelings are built....

"Do not shrug off the significance of this mask-wearing moment in American history....

"Saul Alinsky[,] in his 1971 Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals, wrote[: 'O]nce you organize people around something as commonly agreed[-]upon as pollution, then an organized people is on the move....

"Once it's accepted in American culture that others come before self[—]not as a biblical command[,] but rather [as a] governmental and political duty—it's a short and natural step to socialist takeover, to [a] collectivist win, to communist smashing of the Constitution....The left—the committed, hard-core, communist-like left—doesn't want simple obedience, anyway.

"The[ir] end[-]game is worship. The end game is a population that swoons over government[:] the provider and protector of all that's good....Yes, they'll take the votes for now. But in the end, they want the transformation of this country to be so complete, that citizens' hearts and minds are captured in their propaganda cages[—]never...again [to] be freed. Never again to even want to be freed....If America is to be saved from socialism[,] and rescued from the globalist-minded bureaucrats who'd collect the world's citizens and arrange them within nice, tight corrals to be easily ruled[—]rather than [to] let them roam free[—i]t's the churchgoers and believers and followers of Christ who must take up [the] reins and fight." – pp. 205–9

It's Up to the Believers

"Why the Christians? Why the Bible-readers, why the biblically focused, why the Bible-centered individuals more than any other segment of society—more so than the scholars, the intellectuals[,] and [the] Make America Great Again types[,] of...sovereign[-]nation fame?...

"Judeo-Christians...know [that] all of earthly living is a struggle—that this life is only a blink in [their] preparatory time for the next, permanent, everlasting life....

"We need men and women...who...unashamedly push forward a godly vision of America[,] close to what was conceived in the Mayflower Compact, in the Declaration of Independence, in the Articles of Confederation, in the Constitution, [and] in the writings[,] opinions[,] and essays of [the] framers and [F]ounders[.] And that means insisting on a government of people who are rooted in those very documents, along with the Bible, the Ten Commandments, and the Judeo-Christian system of beliefs and values....

"Anything less and it's just fighting an endless number of battles, but never winning the war. [I]f the greatness of America came by way of a founding that was steeped deep in the philosophy and biblical beliefs of Judeo-Christianity[,] then...the solution to [the] socialism that's rotting our nation is...to circle back to what made us great in the first place....Then it's to boldly insist on a culture and a political world that recognizes and abides [by] these same ideals.

"[I]ndividuals who believe in a higher power don't need man-made laws to keep them in line. They are already constrained by the[ir] higher power. [B]ecause [t]hey are self-governed[,] they aren't willing to accept a government that wants to run their lives[.]

" 'Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom,' Benjamin Franklin is quoted as saying....

"Spiritual discernment relies on God for guidance. And it's more than wisdom; it's deeper than knowledge. It's the application of wisdom, yes—but without the fleshly, worldly snares that entrap...and deceive. It's a gift of the Holy Spirit, and it allows the receiver to see beyond the façade and [to] separate the good from the evil, as through the eyes of God....

"Discernment...concern[s] itself with...the godly—or ungodly—motives of [a] philanthropist. Discernment doesn't look at the medical degrees and education status of a bureaucratic spokesperson[.] Discernment doesn't...bend or break with the political or popular[-]culture winds, because discernment comes from above, through the Holy Spirit, like a blazing beacon toward truth. It clears a path[;] it cuts through clutter.

"It's...discernment that shows the lies and deceptions[,] and fills in the blanks of the spiritual battle. 'Beloved,' 1 John 4:1 states, 'do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God'[.]

"America needs [m]ore spiritually[-]discerning people[: m]ore spiritual discerners who can truly see the seeds of socialism before they root and spread. America needs more biblically[-]based spiritual discernment...work[ing] in politics and culture[:] the kind that takes a worldview of Judeo-Christianity first, [and the] Constitution second[.]

"[H]ope...rests with Judeo-Christians seizing the day...by seizing on discernment from above[,] and applying the revelations to the physical plane, in the here and now....

"Christians have a realistic, proper view of humankind as fallen—as sin-filled, as born into sin. And that causes a dependency on God, not government.

"Christians are trained on freedom[:] that Jesus frees [them] from bondage[.]

"Christians are taught...that God grants [them] free will—meaning, individuals are at liberty to choose their own paths[, and] freedom...is...a natural human trait [from] birth.

"Christians are cautioned against judging others—'Do not judge by appearances'[,] John 7:24 states[. T]olerance of others is part...of the faith[.] Acts of tolerance and love, taken together and in proper form, with discernment as the guide, are actually examples of freedom-in-Christ[.] They allow for differences of opinion, differences of speech, differences of dress, [and] differences in personalit[y.]

"Christianity is filled with standards of behavior[al] teachings that encourage followers to practice self-discipline, compassion, charity, humility[,] and...self-control, and to be honest[,] steadfast[,] industrious[,] purposeful[,] and poised[:] partakers of good—and true enemies of evil.

"Christianity recognizes the...specific gifts, talents, [and] spiritual endowments of each...of God's human...creations[. I]ndividualism...is a core facet of the Bible. Jesus wants individual relationships.

"Christianity accepts the idea of absolutes...and never wavers from the fundamental idea: Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. Not government.

"Christianity points the way to living for something higher, something intangible and spiritual, [and] not of this earth—which makes...acceptance and recognition of America as a spirit...so much...easier. And that makes the striving to live for something greater than oneself[—]and to honor the sacrifices of those who went before, those who gave [their] blood and sweat and tears so that today's Americans can live free—that makes that striving all the more natural.

"Philip Vander Elst wrote in The Christian Roots of Freedom and Tolerance: 'The historical case for linking the growth of freedom with the development of Judaism and Christianity begins with the observation that the world of classical pagan antiquity was almost entirely hostile to the idea of liberty. With the rare exception of some Stoic philosophers, it had no conception of human rights'[.]

"It's no wonder communist nations seek to drive out God. Collectivism and Christianity can't coexist[.]

"If America is to be free, America needs Christians to get louder. [I]t's...the turning from God, the secularization of the nation, the refusal to uphold biblical standards and morals and values—that opened the door to big, bigger, biggest, even socialist government to enter. It's only by [re-]turning to what worked in the first place that America can recapture and hold for the long term its cherished freedoms.

"That starts with the churches. That starts with national confession and repentance. That starts with the hearts and souls of the people. [I]nteresting[ly,] Alinsky [quotes] John Adams: ' "The [American] Revolution was effected before the war commenced[; t]he Revolution was in the hearts and minds of the people." ' [And concludes,] 'A revolution without a prior reformation would collapse or become a totalitarian tyranny.'....'For God has not given us a spirit of fear,' 2 Timothy 1:7 states, 'but of power and of love and of a sound mind.'

"Socialists in America are...advancing. [T]hey're coming...for the soul of the country. Let us awaken, fall to [our] knees in confession, repentance, and prayer, don spiritual armor, and stop the advance." – pp. 209–18

Epilogue

And the 8 O'Clock Club

"Social media cannot be trusted. Social media cannot be counted upon as a tool for Americans to spread liberty views. Soon enough, there could come a day when freedom[-]focused patriots have nowhere to turn, nowhere to gather[,] nowhere...to wage mass fights against the socialists, the globalists, the collectivists, [and] the communists[.]

"We had a taste of what th[eir] world would look like...when the streets [were] filled with Black Lives Matter protesters[,] Antifa rioters[,] and outright anarchist thugs...bent on destroying any semblance of law and order by defunding and abolishing [the] police...without respect for patriotism[,] freedom, [or] constitutional...and societal standards[,] in the summer of 2020...when looters and rage-filled radicals and Marxist-like militants took over sections of Seattle, Washington[,] where...lunatic[-]fringe insurrection leaders sent out lists of demands to local government that included...end[ing] youth incarceration [and] infusi[ng] 'social equality' into budget matters....We can't rely on government to be the solution—particularly when government...stands by and watches...or...politically preaches[.] We need...Christians and those of faith to grow bolder, louder, and more organized in their appeals on America's behalf.

"[To] summ[arize this book] in a single word[:] Repent. And that means the solution [too] can be summ[arized] in a single word: Jesus....That's truth. [A]ll Americans [must] unite, with a single forceful voice, in a manner that recognizes this truth[,] and that simultaneously sets God, not government, as the leader of this nation. Once we reestablish who's really in charge, the seeds of socialism will naturally wither and die. It's our only hope. Malachi 3." – pp. 219–20

Copyright (c) 2022 Mark D. Blackwell.

Andy Ngo's Unmasked

The following are extracts (for review purposes) from Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy, Andy Ngo, 2021-February:

Chapter 3: Portland[, Oregon]

Send [i]n the Feds

"For the...four weeks [after] the Fourth of July[,] antifa's plan of escalating attacks on federal property to provoke a federal response for the cameras produced the exact propaganda they wanted....At its peak there were probably more than one hundred journalists and livestreamers, most of whom were sympathetic to the rioters and protesters. [A]t the urging or demand of others, their cameras were trained solely on law enforcement to capture their every move. Those [journalists] who ran afoul of antifa's rules were forced out or assaulted and robbed....

"Every use of force by officers, whether it be [by] tear gas, smoke, pepper...balls, or arrests, was heavily scrutinized. Out-of-context video snippets were released on social media and published by news outlets, generating mass rage and universally negative press for law enforcement and the Trump administration. The officers were called 'Trump's [G]estapo,' 'storm troopers,' and 'thugs' by Democratic politicians and the media.

"[The journalist] Erin Smith...says antifa use a 'calibrated level of violence' to provoke reactions by law enforcement for propaganda purposes.

" 'Antifa seek to force law enforcement into a dilemma action, where there are simply no good responses from a public relations standpoint,' Smith told me. '[All] choices undermine the legitimacy of the state and its security forces.' " – pp. 63–4

Chapter 4: Rose City Antifa

"Rose City Antifa (RCA) [is] the oldest antifa group in the United States. It takes its name from...'City of Roses,' a nickname for Portland[, Oregon].

"Antifa began accelerating their mass organizing in early 2017 as Donald Trump took office. [I]n June 2020, the public...received a rare glimpse into the workings of the group through a video release[d when] a journalist at Project Veritas who used the moniker 'Lion' was...conditionally approved to join RCA[.]

"Since 2016, we have been told...by biased media and antifa apologists that antifa is not an organization....While there is no single capital[-]A 'Antifa' organization with one leader, there are indeed localized cells and groups with formalized structures and memberships. Though officially leaderless, these are organizations by every definition.

"The RCA curriculum is modeled on a university course. Yet it includes training on how to use guns and do reconnaissance against enemies....

"RCA was founded in 2007 and is the first-known formalized antifa group in the United States using 'antifa' in its name. [T]hrough Lion's time in RCA, he learned that it was started by a Portland woman, Caroline Victorin (née Gauld). She has been in a long-term relationship with a Swedish national. Together, they worked to bring a tried-and-true European antifa model to the United States." – pp. 79–82

Chapter 5: Origin Story

"The militant far-left movement[,] antifa[,] ha[s] existed for over half a century in Europe. It has had decades to develop a coherent ideology and both violent and nonviolent strategies[,] to undermine liberal democracy under the guise of fighting fascism." – p. 98

The Weimar Republic

"[After] World War I[,] Germany was punished with crippling reparation payments[.] Emperor Wilhelm II's...abdication of the throne further threw the new nation-state into confusion. Between 1919 and 1920, [it] faced uprisings from both the left and right. In January 1919, around 50,000 communists...led a failed armed rebellion in Berlin.

"By August that year, a constitution was...adopted in the city of Weimar. But Germany did not have a democratic history or tradition, and the Weimar government was deeply unpopular.

"[T]hroughout the 1920s, political paramilitaries became the norm as groups and parties prepped their members to try to seize power[.]

"The paramilitaries were used as security for political gatherings and to violently shut down the meetings of opposing groups. The [R]epublic was marred with wave after wave of tit-for-tat political violence. The paramilitaries, both left[-] and right[-]wing, are notorious for carrying out assassinations and committing brutal acts of violence. Efforts throughout the 1920s by the government to ban some of the paramilitaries failed. They simply regrouped and reorganized under new names.

"Nearly every political group or party had a paramilitary: the communists, the centrists, and, of course, the fascists. For good reason, the most remembered of German paramilitaries is the [Storm Detachment (Storm Troopers, or SA, German:] Sturmabteilung[)], the original paramilitary of the National Socialist German Worker's Party, also known as the Nazi Party. Called 'Brownshirts,' based on the color of their uniforms, these paramilitary men were Hitler's violent street thugs.

"[T]he history of far-left paramilitaries in the German interwar years has faded [from] memory. Like the Nazis, the Communist Party of Germany (German: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, or KPD) had its own paramilitaries. The party was Stalinist in orientation and was closely aligned with the Soviet Union. At the national conference of the German Communist Party in 1924, they formed a new paramilitary: the Red Front Fighters' League (German: Roter Frontkämpfer-Bund). The league's paramilitary members had their own uniforms, and the group adopted the clenched fist as its symbol. Leftist groups today from Black Lives Matter to antifa have adopted that communist symbol.

"Throughout the 1920s, the Red Front Fighters' League was extremely violent, engaging in clashes with the paramilitaries of liberal parties. [A]gain[,] the communist paramilitary was mostly preoccupied with fighting liberals and socialists rather than the Nazi paramilitary. [T]he German Communist Party and its various offshoots viewed social democrats and liberals as 'social fascists' no different from Nazis. In fact, Communist International, the...Lenin-founded group that promoted communism around the world, believed that social democracy would inevitably lead to fascism....

"Despite claiming to be Germany's 'only anti-fascist party,' the German Communist Party sometimes worked with the Nazis to undermine the governing Social Democrats." – pp. 99–101

Antifascist Action

"In May 1932, the German Communist Party announced the formation of the Antifaschistische Aktion (Antifascist Action, commonly referred to as 'Antifa'), a new paramilitary communist group. This is the original 'Antifa' and the group that contemporary antifa around the world take inspiration from. The paramilitary was created to bring together a coalition of communists at the community level to oppose and fight political opponents.

"Though calling itself the Antifascist Action, those who served as decision makers on its executive boards consisted of members of the German Communist Party and other allied communist groups. Simply put, the Antifascist Action was a communist organization under a thinly veiled new name. It held rallies and developed its own propaganda. The two-flag logo used by today's antifa groups is based on the original red flags logo of the Antifascist Action. The two red flags symbolized the union of communism and socialism. Like the other communist paramilitaries before it, the Antifascist Action was involved in political street brawls. They also acted as security and self-defense for communists who lived together in select neighborhoods and apartment buildings.

"While the communists were occupied with fighting the social democrats and liberals, the appeal and power of the Nazi Party continued to grow. By July 1932, the Nazis became the largest party in [the] parliament[.] The campaign season was marred by exceptional levels of political violence between fascist, social democratic, and communist members....

"The German Communist and Social Democrat [p]arties were both banned, leaving the Nazis with no political opposition[.]" – pp. 101–2

Antifa State[-]Building

"German communists['] preoccupation with fighting the social democrats and liberals, who they called 'social fascists,' weakened a united opposition to the Nazis and further undermined the legitimacy of liberal democracy in the [R]epublic....

"While the Antifascist Action and all opposing groups were banned after Hitler became head of state, the antifa communist ideology never went away. [I]t was...institutionalized in the official state ideology of what would become...East Germany....For over forty years, the extremely repressive conditions in East Germany exemplified what 'antifa' state-building actually looks like.

"Through the East German Ministry for State Security, better known as the Stasi, citizens were monitored and spied on through a vast apparatus of informants who infiltrated all aspects of life and civil society. The secret police agency was originally modeled to be similar to the Soviet Union's secret police, the KGB. The Stasi's mandate by the state was to weed out political dissenters and to terrorize the masses into compliance, in addition to conducting espionage. Antifa groups today do something similar on a community level.

"Secret police form a pillar of communism....One could never know if their friend, family member, or spouse was an informant. In East Germany, the mass persecution and psychological warfare against its own citizens [being] suspected of political wrongthink were justified by the communist state in the name of fighting fascism. But to them, 'fascism' referred to the West and its governing system of liberal democracy." – pp. 102–4

"Like antifa ide[o]logues today who call for terrorist attacks against the state and its institutions, East Germany supported terrorism. Of note was the Stasi's logistical and financial support to [the] West German far-left terrorist group the Red Army Faction[,] also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, which was formed in 1968. Throughout the 1970s, they killed dozens of people in West Germany[.] The goal was to undermine the West German government, which they viewed as fascistic, as well as to oppose American 'imperialism.' In 1967[,] Baader-Meinhof Gang founder Gudrun En[s]slin declared[:] 'Violence is the only way to answer violence.'

"The rhetoric used by Baader-Meinhof Gang members is nearly indistinguishable from [the] language used by antifa extremists today....

"The misnomer of 'anti-fascism' holds steady today for contemporary antifa groups—they advocate...the overthrow of liberal democracies and the abolishment of capitalism. And the legacy of a pervasive surveillance culture provides one of the pillars for antifa activities." – pp. 104–5

Europe

"Today, the largest, most organized and violent antifa groups remain in Germany[.]

"Despite now having a strong, stable, and prosperous liberal democracy (Germany has the leading GDP in the European Union), the culture of polarized politics remains....Germany's domestic intelligence agency...released data showing [that] left-wing extremists have become more violent in recent years." – p. 105

Italy and Spain

"Argo Secondari, an anarchist, founded a militant anti-fascist organization in Rome in 1921 called the People's Daring Ones (Italian: Arditi del Popolo). The group included communists, socialists, anarchists, and anti-monarchists. They led fights against [Mussolini's] Blackshirts in various towns in the Italian countryside. These historical fights form part of the borrowed mythos used by contemporary antifa groups today. By fighting people on the streets of Portland[;] Berkeley[, California;] and elsewhere, they claim to be engaging in the same anti-fascist tradition....

"Antifa groups today also borrow mythos based on the history of Spanish anarchists and communists who opposed the nationalists...during the Spanish Civil War. Dolores Ibárruri Gómez, a member of the Communist Party of Spain (Spanish: Partido Comunista de España), popularized the slogan 'No pasarán,' or 'They shall not pass,' in a speech in 1936. No pasarán is still used today at antifa rallies and in graffiti messages." – pp. 106–7

Antifa in Europe Today

"Of particular note are parts of the Kreuzberg-Friedrichshain and Neukölln neighborhoods in Berlin[, Germany.] The 'blind-eye' approach [adopted] by local governments allowed...radical far-left squatters [to] occupy abandoned property and land[, leaving] communities to fester for decades, resulting in the development of their own parallel societies where the authority of the state and the rule of law are challenged. Antifa in CHAZ attempted to turn Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood into a variant of this.

"Every year on...May Day, the inhabitants and supporters of these antifa-friendly neighborhoods turn violent. In July 2016, thousands of masked militants attacked police in Friedrichshain to protest redevelopment efforts in the area. They...destroyed shops[.] It took about 1,800 officers to bring the rioting under control." – p. 107

"Both the extreme left and right seek to undermine liberal democracy and the rule of law, whether through the use of violence or other means. They have differing political visions and goals, but both would result in the destruction of the liberties we value.

"[T]he threat of the far right is understood by the American public and actively countered by government, academia, media, and civil society. No comparable resolve or mass organization exists to counter the far left. Why? One explanation is the cultural dominance of the left. The political homogeneity in popular culture, academe, and urban centers of influence (e.g., New York[;] Washington, DC[;] Los Angeles[;] etc.) has produced a populace with severe blind spots." – pp. 108–9

Chapter 6: American Mutation

Critical Theory

"Antifa do not view their premeditated and preemptive acts of violence as 'violence.' It is part of the strategy of remaking words to have completely new meanings. But it also pulls from a left-wing philosophical tradition established by twentieth-century German philosopher and sociologist Herbert Marcuse....

"Born in 1898, Marcuse was a committed leftist all his life. As a young adult, he...voted for the German Communist Party. In 1933, he joined the Institute for Social Research, a think tank at Frankfurt University. [The Institute] is more commonly known as the 'Frankfurt School.'...

"One of the Frankfurt School's lasting legacies is the development of critical theory—the Marxist-inspired theory that undergirds all the various 'studies' disciplines in academe today. In short, critical theorists develop ways to 'criticize' perceived structures and systems of oppression in order to bring about radical change. It offers a heuristic for understanding all human interaction through power dynamics between groups....Colloquially, critical theory is sometimes referred to as 'cultural Marxism'[:] an application of Marxist theory to groups of people based on identity rather than class.

"Many dogmas of critical theory have become so mainstream in American academe and society that people don't even know the origins of those truth claims. Have you heard it argued that there is no such thing as objective reality and truth? Social-justice ideologues use this dogma to 'deconstruct' science[:] biological sex, for example. That's from critical theory. What about 'words are violence'? Antifa militants cite this to justify their violent behavior against opposing views. This is also from critical theory.

"Marcuse became known as the 'father of the New Left'...particularly through establishing the now far-left foundational belief that tolerance means actively suppressing 'intolerant,' usually right-wing, ideas....

"For decades, American academe has been marinating in Marcuse's ideas, spreading it to students who then form the next generation of politicians, leaders, and activists.

"Even stalwart civil[-]liberty organizations like the ACLU, now filled with members educated in this worldview, have been retreating quietly from their principle of defending free speech. In a 2018 document sent to members titled 'ACLU Case Selection Guidelines: Conflicts between Competing Values or Priorities,' the organization responded to the onslaught of resignations and criticisms it received after defending the right of the alt-right to march in Charlottesville.

"In August 2017, the ACLU supported Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler in his lawsuit against the city when it forced him to relocate his permitted rally. However, the [new] 2018 guidelines in response to left-wing criticism stated that 'a decision by the ACLU to represent a white supremacist group may...directly further an agenda that is antithetical to our mission and values[,] and that may inflict harm on listeners.'

"The mainstream left's retreat from [the] liberal values of free speech has worked to the benefit of antifa in every way imaginable....

"In 2020, the recurring theme from the left in response to mass BLM and antifa violence in the streets is '[p]eople over property.' Indeed, an author named Vicky Osterweil...was championed by the mainstream press for her book In Defense of Looting, published in August 2020. NPR interviewed Osterweil, who argued that looting is moral.

" 'The very basis of property in the U.S. is derived through whiteness and through black oppression, through the history of slavery and settler domination of the country,' she said in the interview with reporter Natalie Escobar. 'Looting strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness, and of the police. It gets to the very root of the way those three things are interconnected. And also it provides people with an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure and helps them imagine a world that could be.' This is verbatim what antifa say when they are asked to justify why they try to burn down businesses and homes. What the journalists, pundits, and intelligentsia don't understand is that at antifa riots, there is really no line between property destruction and assault. One bleeds into the other as they all serve the same purpose of chaos and violence." – pp. 123–6

"[S]tudents and outside[-]antifa militant groups work...hand in hand to carry out violence, threats, disruption, or harassment against targets at institutions that are supposed to uphold free speech and open inquiry. This close relationship is a unique development of antifa in the North American context. [W]hat is happening in the United States and Canada...recently demonstrates a unique cross-pollination of several radical ideologies: Marxism, anarchism, and critical theory....

"Intersectionality flows through American antifa. The revolution they are fighting for will not be led by workers but rather [by] trans, black, and indigenous 'folx' of color....

"The rise of antifa coincides with the rise of BLM. [T]heir mutual hatred of the United States has brought them together to form a powerful, dangerous union." – p. 127

Chapter 7: Black Lives Matter

"Black Lives Matter (BLM) cofounder Patrisse Cullors was interviewed in the Los Angeles Times [i]n August 2017[. S]he was asked if BLM would be open to a conversation with the president. She responded: 'We wouldn't as a movement take a seat at the table with Trump. [He] is literally the epitome of evil[:] all the evils of this country—be it racism, capitalism, sexism, homophobia.'

"In her own words, one of the cofounders of BLM demonstrates how closely the organization's ideology aligns with antifa. Central to both is the goal of abolishing law enforcement, American jurisprudence, national borders, and free markets in the name of anti-racism and anti-fascism." – p. 129

Foundation of Lies

" 'Hands up, don't shoot' was a myth perpetuated by...Michael...Brown's friend Dorian Johnson....

"It wasn't just Brown who benefited from false narratives[,] but also other deceased or injured figures posthumously adopted as martyr[s] in BLM[:] for example, Trayvon Martin...and Sandra Bland.

"The most devastating consequence of BLM is that it provided the outlet for radical Marxist views to enter [the] mainstream American media, politics, and society under the guise of 'racial justice.' " – p. 131

Marxist Ideology

"BLM is usually presented as an anti-racist uprising and movement focused on countering anti-black police brutality and 'systemic racism.' This effective branding strategy in [its] name has masked BLM's true radical ideology....

"Indeed, on-record statements and writings...by the group's three founders, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, demonstrate their agenda[:] to mainstream hatred of law enforcement, capitalism, free speech, and the United States itself. If this sounds familiar, it is because these are also core ideological components of antifa[.]

"BLM is...a member of the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), a collective of radical left organizations that share the "BLM" agenda of overturning capitalism and destabilizing the United States.

"On its now-deleted page listing various demands, the M4BL had stated[:]

" 'Until we are able to overturn U.S. imperialism, capitalism, and white supremacy, our brothers and sisters around the world will continue to live in chains.'

"[A]ccusations of American 'imperialism' harken explicitly to the Cold War–era propaganda of the Soviet Union, which viewed U.S. imperialism not necessarily as an expansion of territory but [as] the spreading of liberal politics, capitalism, and culture....

"In April 2019, [Patrisse] Cullors, who is an associate professor in the Social Justice and Community Organizing master's degree program at Prescott College in Arizona, penned an article for the Harvard Law Review[:]

" 'Our task is not only to abolish prisons, policing, and militarization, which are wielded in the name of "public safety" and "national security," ' she wrote, '[w]e must also demand reparations[.]' " – pp. 131–6

Convergence

"James Lindsay, coauthor of Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity—and Why This Harms Everybody, pinpoints BLM as the vector that allowed social-justice activism on campuses to metastasize into a violent, virulent movement in the rest of American society.

" 'Black [L]ives [M]atter was enormously visible,' Lindsay says. 'It was everywhere, and presented as a matter of life and death.' Indeed, the urgency surrounding BLM pressured sympathetic liberals to tolerate and even excuse even the most illiberal excesses of the movement. From street protesters carrying signs and chanting slogans urging for police to be killed[,] to even instances of mass murder, BLM's legitimacy was protected by liberals....

"Through BLM, antifa ideologues saw an opportunity to be mainstreamed. Taking advantage of the urgency and panic, antifa were able to say that their militant actions were needed to address white supremacy and fascism.

"As the Republican Party base began to consolidate behind candidate Trump in 2016, BLM took to the streets to protest. It was during this time that an informal alliance developed between BLM and antifa. Trained in fighting and ready for battle, antifa militants acted as volunteer 'security' at BLM-style protests." – pp. 136–8

"[B]oth ideologies now cross-pollinate and influence one another to the point that they are linked[-]entities[,] with the same people showing up to each other's events.

"Their convergence has been immensely mutually beneficial. Antifa get mainstream legitimacy on the back of American racial divisions while BLM gets a volunteer militia at [the] helm." – p. 140

Chapter 8: Violence

Behind the Violence

"In an August 2019 on-camera interview with Rose City Antifa, NBC reporter Dasha Burns directly asked a masked member about the group's violent street actions.

" 'We see fascism as an inherently violent ideology, so when we disrupt its organizing, we see that as self-defense,' the man answered.

"[He] never referred to their militant actions as 'violence.' He was careful to label them 'self-defense'—even when the reporter asked him about antifa assaulting people with weapons and projectiles. This line has been carefully toed by Rose City Antifa since scrutiny was brought to bear on their actions following high-profile riots in 2017....

"Rose City Antifa posted in a statement on its Facebook [page] in 2017[:] 'Anti-fascism is, by nature, a form of self-defense: the goal of fascism is to exterminate the vast majority of human beings.' " – p. 154

Chapter 9: Deadly Violence

Connor Betts

"One man in Ohio who joined the chorus of antifa in calling Willem van Spronsen a 'martyr' was 24-year-old Connor Stephen Betts. He went on to carry out his own deadly shooting in a packed[,] commercial Dayton neighborhood on August 4, 2019. He killed nine people, including his sister, and injured twenty-seven others....

"Bett's shooting came within twenty-four hours of another mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, that shocked the nation. Patrick Crusius killed twenty-three people, mostly Latinos, at a Walmart. Another twenty-three suffered injuries. The 21-year-old allegedly left behind a 2,300-word manifesto on [the I]nternet forum [website] 8chan[,] espousing racist and white nationalist beliefs. The entire punditry class picked apart Crusius's manifesto word by word to blame the shooting not merely on him but on President Trump, white people, and every American who supported border security.

"And before details were known about Betts's political beliefs, his mass shooting was also assumed to be related to white supremacy because he was white. For a few hours, we heard about both El Paso and Dayton and the crisis of white racism. But once it became known that Betts actually espoused militant antifa views, the Dayton shooting went down the memory hole....

"A year after the El Paso mass shooting, the hashtag #ElPasoStrong trended on social media. It was created to remember and honor the victims of the far-right shooting. Many media outlets published stories of how Latinos were affected. However, a day later, no #DaytonStrong campaign materialized. This wasn't any surprise to me. Some victims are valued more [highly] in the eyes of the American media than others." – pp. 177–81

Michael Reinoehl

"On August 29, 2020, three months into the daily violent protests in Portland, a 48-year-old volunteer security person for BLM-antifa killed a Trump supporter in [the] downtown [area].

"Michael Forest Reinoehl shot Aaron 'Jay' Danielson, 39, using a pistol at near...point-blank range after lying in wait for him around a street corner....

"The last few months...before...Reinoehl['s] deadly shooting show he was a violent man with no regard for the well-being of others. Over and over, authorities failed to prosecute or jail him, even when they had several opportunities to [do so]. This is the travesty in the killing of Danielson. It could have been prevented....

"Five days...after the killing, Reinoehl...emerged in a VICE News interview with [the] sympathetic left-wing journalist Donovan Farley....Reinoehl admitted to the killing, saying: 'I had no choice. I mean[,] I had a choice. I could have sat there and watched them kill a friend of mine of color. But I wasn't going to do that.'...

"Reinoehl also admitted to being a fugitive, saying he was not turning himself in because he th[ought] police [we]re collaborating with right-wingers. [T]he rejection of police is a central tenant of antifa ideology. They do not allow comrades to cooperate with law enforcement." – pp. 181–8

Chapter 12: Information Warfare and Propaganda

"In my first year [of] covering the antifa beat, one of the things that shocked me[,] as much as [the] street violence[,] was the alternat[iv]e reality [the] local and national press presented on antifa.

"Video recordings...by independent media journalists...provide [an] uncensored look into antifa's extremism. Antifa know this and have made it a priority to keep out journalists[—]even releasing manuals on how to obstruct the work of unapproved press. [And] they've made key allies in the media[,] to counter negative coverage, amplify their propaganda messaging, and discredit their shared opponents.

"The American public has been inundated with nonstop propaganda that obfuscates and lies about antifa[:] simultaneously presenting them as anti-fascists fighting racism and [as] a figment of the right's imagination. How many people who have heard of antifa actually know [that] the movement is made up of organized networks of anarchist-communists who have the goal, training, and determination to overthrow the U.S. government?" – pp. 210–1

Fake News

"[T]he default position is to view antifa as the 'good guys.'...

"I think it is pure ignorance that leads news personalities like MSNBC's Joy Reid or CNN's Chris Cuomo to repeat some variation that 'antifa' is 'just short for "anti-fascist." '

"[S]omething different[,] is the existence of whole networks of writers and so-called journalists who intentionally spread pro-antifa messaging....Most do it as ideological fellow[-]travelers on the far left, but some...are actually members of the militant[-]antifa movement." – pp. 211–2

Unpersoning

"[A]fter my beating by antifa thugs in 2019[, a] number of journalists...began targeting me with such animosity and viciousness[,] that they were indistinguishable from antifa accounts. Journalists I [had] never interacted with[,] pursued me with an obsessiveness [that] I can only describe as a personal vendetta. Their goal has been not only to delegitimize me as a journalist[,] but [also] to make me a toxic figure that others would be afraid of associating with. They pursued that goal through writing lies and half-truths[,] and even inciting violence....

"The network of antifa-supporting journalists is powerful...because their smears are laundered [by] one another and amplified far beyond the original publication. The smears eventually become citations in a Wikipedia entry[,] or the first results in a Google search.

"Any [t]ime someone looks me up online, they will see the false smears first....

"Alex Zielinsky...has played an important role in normalizing antifa in Portland. [H]er coverage since she became the...Portland Mercury['s] news editor protects antifa, amplifies their talking points about 'fascists' in Portland, and joins in demonizing antifa's opponents. Sometimes this manifests in shockingly cruel ways." – pp. 212–5

"[A] cabal of messengers...work in media and have the ability to launder their narratives far and wide. The damage they've done in making the public ignorant and misinformed on antifa has been immense. But as left-wing writers in an industry run mostly by people on the left, their bias does not count against them." – p. 216

Identifying Antifa Press

"I did not like Trump's 2019 comment describing the mainstream media as 'truly the enemy of the people,' but one can see the basis for that sentiment when looking at how transparently [it is, that] extreme...far-left...ideologues are presented as the arbiters of truth....

"As [this book] demonstrates, antifa can terrify, dox, harass, and intimidate[,] without any [overt] use of force. They've been particularly effective[,] because they have infected one of the most important institutions of a free society: the press. Ironically, [the] media is now often used to undermine public support for free speech[,] and [for] the nation's norms, culture, and history." – pp. 218–20

Chapter: Afterword

My Story

"[Formerly,] I [had been] concerned with the material distractions of most youth[:] unaware of the culture, freedoms, and liberties that made society around me prosperous....

"My [M]illennial peers are often ignorant [of] the fact that in much of the developing world, conflicts still end in tit-for-tat clan violence[,] because citizens cannot depend on the state for justice....

"How ironic that decades after Mai and Binh[,] my parents[,] fled revolutionary communism, their son would encounter a virulent strain of th[at] ideology in their adopted home in the United States.

"[V]iolent masked revolutionaries...view...me as a 'reactionary.' Antifa's choice of language in describing me [in] that way echo[es] how my parents were labeled 'counterrevolutionary' by the Vietnamese regime and punished accordingly." – pp. 231–3

A Message to Antifa

"I...see [a]ntifa['s] humanity and [I] don't wish them ill. I...feel sympathy for [people] pulled and brainwashed into antifa's twisted ideology. They are often exploited and used[,] by a movement that explicitly rejects the value of individuals in favor of the cause.

"While some...antifa...are...highly educated and in white-collar professions[,] those [who are] involved in the street violence are disproportiona[te]ly individuals dealing with housing insecurity, financial instability, and mental health issues like gender dysphoria....

"Fear and hatred drive left-wing people to antifa's extremist ideology—but there is more[: t]hey have grievances that need to be acknowledged. [Yet even s]ome of [those grievances are] indoctrinated through education and culture....Grievance ideologies resonate with [M]illennials and Gen Z[.] I can understand why those who lose faith in the American idea—[or] in liberal democracy—[can] turn to extremist ideologies for solutions. The corruption in [the] politicians and state institutions at times rattles my own confidence in the American rule of law and democracy.

"For those who are vulnerable, antifa is more than appealing. It promises community, protection, and purpose. It is organized like a zealous religious movement through the constant feeding of ideology and propaganda. They believe a communist-anarchist world[-]utopia is possible. There would be no borders, police, prisons, racism, or fascism. All [human] material needs would be met through community mutual[-]aid, not through working in an exploitative[,] capitalist system.

"But the world [that] antifa envisions is a literal 'utopia.'...No society can function as antifa envisions. Their small-scale experiments at creating separatist[,] anarcho-communist communes...have ended in disaster and death. Even when their anti-fascist ideology was instituted at the state level (e.g., in the former East Germany), the result was the creation of a sprawling spy apparatus that monitored the public[-] and private thoughts of citizens for wrongthink.

"Antifa will continue to grow after this book's publication[. T]he ideology is mainstreamed and [has been] given legitimacy[,] through Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Party. Still, I urge compassion for those who have been drawn into this violent[,] extremist ideology. The hatred antifa feel toward their society, country, and fellow citizens comes from pain and resentment of their own lives.

"One of the most disempowering mind[-]viruses infecting America and the West[, to] the benefit of antifa[,] is grievance ideology. Through its control in every cultural and educational institution, it primes people to become perpetual victims. It makes them see grievance in every interaction. It turns pain and ignorance into hatred. It turns people into [apparent] oppressors. [The e]ffort...by the Trump administration in September 2020 to address critical race theory via an executive order to ban federal contractors from teaching the poisonous ideology is a good first step. But how do we address it in K–12 education? Higher education? The rest of society? What it will take[,] is the bravery to say, 'Enough!' Grievance ideology only has power[,] insofar as it is seen as legitimate[: i]t is not." – pp. 234–6

"The victory of real justice over antifa's version of 'social justice' requires people to be held accountable for their crimes. The systematic demonizing and weakening of police departments and law enforcement[,] across the United States[, has] emboldened BLM-antifa to destroy and attack with near impunity. Law enforcement need to be given access to the training and tools [needed] for crowd control. Prosecutors must prosecute....

"Antifa's ideology[—]or any extremist belief system for that matter[—]cannot be banned[,] per the First Amendment. Antifa have the constitutional right to espouse their hatred, as do racists and other bigots. I'm skeptical that additional legislation can be helpful[,] when there are already laws that can be applied. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act may be relevant[.] Antifa, regardless of what they call themselves, are an organized criminal network of groups....Organizers exchange money and resources with one another. They provide radicalization[-]training and instructions on how to commit crimes....

"Why are district attorneys, who are elected politicians, determining who gets prosecuted? They have every incentive to bow to the whims of the mob in order to stay in office. There must be better independent oversight[,] to hold rogue prosecutors accountable.

"The BLM-antifa narrative that police are murdering black and brown people in epidemic proportions needs to be thoroughly debunked....This should be the job of the media, but it has been they who fan the flames of racial division[,] through one-sided wall-to-wall coverage. The unending distraction from real issues[,] that c[ould] otherwise be addressed through evidence-based policy making[,] has us chasing shadows." – pp. 236–7

"On November 14, 2020, thousands of people from across the United States traveled to Washington, DC, for the 'Million MAGA March.'...As the participants dispersed...they were met by marauding gangs of Black Lives Matter and antifa black bloc counter-protesters.

"They pushed and punched people to the ground. They hit them with sticks. Diners eating outside at hotel restaurants had projectiles and mortar explosives thrown at them. No one was spared. Those targeted included women, children, and the elderly....

"During the 2016 presidential campaign, people leaving Trump rallies in liberal cities, like San Jose and Chicago, were stalked, robbed, and beaten....

"I am grateful for this country and its Constitution....My family came from a society where there is no tradition of freedom of speech or the rule of law....

"Tragically, what I see is that it's becoming taboo to be patriotic or grateful to one's nation. Americans have been robbed and assaulted in public for merely holding symbols of the United States. As the George Floyd–inspired rioting broke out in Portland at the end of May 2020, I saw a mob of so-called racial justice activists beat a man peacefully carrying an American flag in [the] downtown [area.]

"Antifa, its far-left allies, and [its] useful idiots have convinced the public that patriotism is synonymous with racism and fascism. I reject that and call for all decent people to do the same. As much as this book is about antifa, it's also a letter of gratitude to the nation that welcomed my parents[:] penniless refugees from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, to become equal citizens.

"Antifa seek to destroy the American philosophy and the [actu]al state itself. They are finding some success. For those who are drawn to their siren calls of 'anti-racism'[,] 'anti-fascism'[,] and 'equity'[, just] look to where their ideas have been put into practice. [There, n]o one inherits a utopia[,] or [even] civilization." – pp. 237–9

Copyright (c) 2022 Mark D. Blackwell.