Tag: Post modern

Personal Truth and the Destructive Vortex of Neo-Nihilism

Author: Dr K. Now.

One can choose to deny objective truths as much as one wishes. However, this choice to deny objective truths does not change any universal objective truths.

One can announce their personal truth, as loudly and as often as one chooses to do so, however the objective universal fact is that a personal truth is no more than a mere opinion; and opinions cannot ever change an objective universal truth.

 

The situation has now arisen where it does appear that postmodernism has exhausted itself with its ongoing search for meaning; and this initial research, is what has now led to where postmodernism has become meaningless. That is because, the fact is, that the postmodern system (there is no point in using the word postmodern thinkers), has created and led to the actuality of what has become ongoing presentations of self-evident Western society hypocrisies’ and of the presentation of Western society words that are inane and pointless and have become and are meaningless, totally and utterly meaningless, meaningless and meaningless.

The thinkers of the past, prior to what became postmodernism actually searched for objective meanings, they searched for universal truths. The purpose of which was to advance knowledge and understandings pertaining to trying to make sense of human existence, and bring with it, at the same time advancements in learning, knowledge and associated social potential.

This ongoing search continued which eventually led to writing being developed, and writing led to all manner of social markers being found and then recorded. The purpose of which was to identify what had taken place at these times.

All of these different events and social markers, such as the Golden Age of Egypt, the invasions and the rule of Alexander the Great, the Golden Age of the Greeks, the invasions and the Empire of Rome, the invasions of Genghis Khan, the time what became known as the Dark Ages, the invasions of the Ottoman Empire; then there was the Medieval Period, this was eventually followed by the Renaissance. Over time, in all of these times, and in all of these societies, there were great thinkers and writers who continued to record their times and continued with their research. All of this social movement, with its associated writings, progressed to what became known as the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. This time eventually progressed to what became known as the Modern Age, and all of this eventually continued, as a result of ongoing thinking and research, to what became Postmodernism.

All of these times, all of invasions and all of these Ages – and much, much more of course – had their thinkers and their leaders. The search for objective truths was still the mainstay during these times. However, as history informs, and as objective truths informs in terms of inventions, when the scientific method came into use, this was when European thinking and action advanced faster than at any other time. This progression continued to what, as noted, became Modernism and also Postmodernism. It is here – at the Postmodern Age – where humanity has failed itself. 

This is a self-evident truth in terms of the presenting behaviours and associated attempts to redefine objective truths, and all of this Postmodernism has led to where Western Civilisation is collapsing upon itself. That is because personal truths, i.e., opinions and subjectivity has developed to where objectivity is no longer regarded as having any meaning. And, amazingly these personal opinions have not been and are not being challenged. The media has openly and publicly – without any challenge taking place – where rioting has been reported as being peaceful; where observed looting has been reported as being non-existent; and where arson has been reported as being nothing more than a peaceful action, or any other euphuisms that hide the universal truths of what actually exists, and is actually taking place.

As a result of this Postmodern situation taking place, thinkers have been replaced by something else. The best way to describe this something else is neo-nihilism. Neo-nihilism has created a meaning without understanding that nihilism has led its own society on a path and to a path of unquestioned cultism and self-destruction. To which the majority of Western society (there is no point in using the descriptor Western Civilisation) now – again as is self-evident – refuses to acknowledge that neo-nihilism is the standard by which Western society is now conducting itself and which is being supported by an unquestioning media.

As such a great deal of objective behaviour-based lawlessness – as presenting behaviours informs – is now the result, which is either being ignored, not reported or is being celebrated as having social meaning and social benefit. One example is that a Western society allowed many churches to be vandalised and burnt to the ground, without one word of protest from anyone. With no protest taking place, to these church vandalisation and burning, indicates this type of lawlessness is now, as is self-evident, being socially and administratively sanctioned.

The self-evident social situation that now exists in Western societies is a path of denial, and this denial, self-evidently, is a path and a process of its own self-destruction; and that is because objective truths have been totally rejected. This rejection of objective truths will, that now includes where the United Kingdom has a situation where the universality of mathematics is considered as being racist; that fact is that all of this, and of course, much more has and is leading to what is already taking place, as noted, the ongoing self-destruction of Western Civilisation.

As history has informed, since forever, when a situation arises, where the deniers of objective universal truths and where inane and associated dangerous ideologies become the dominant driver of social behaviour, it is this type of social cult-type delusions and accompanying social malaise which has always eventually been conquered by other civilisations that live-by, value and apply objective truths in all of its forms; which self-evidently include, merit at every level of society, competence-based education that is based on the application of universal truths, and also universally knowing that one must have a well-trained merit-based military that adheres to applying immutable objective military universal prowess. The fact is that there never has been a single invasion has ever been achieved by having a social structure of fools, inept thinkers, unskilled leaders, or an incompetent military.

The Hypocrisy of the Fascist Left.

WHO ARE THE NEO-FASCISTS?

By Stephen Moore.

In just the last few weeks, Liz Truss, Britain’s new prime minister, has been denounced by critics as a “fascist.” So has Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s newly elected prime minister. Along with all Republicans in Congress, Texas and Florida GOP Govs. Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis and, of course, former President Donald Trump. Every one of the tens of thousands of “MAGA Republicans” who attend Trump rallies, too.

Dangerous fascists, for that matter, all of whom critics say need to be shut up.

Truss is a fascist because she wants to cut taxes. Meloni is a fascist, and getting banned from several social media platforms, because she gave a rousing speech endorsing God, family and country. What a dangerous tyrant. Republicans in Congress are fascists because they support work for welfare and are trying to block the Green New Deal.

“What is so infuriating about these slurs is that the Left doesn’t even understand what a fascist is.”
Hillary Clinton said after a recent Trump rally in Ohio, “I remember as a young student … I’d watch newsreels and I’d see this guy standing up there ranting and raving, and people shouting and raising their arms.” Trump’s defeated 2016 Democratic presidential rival was referring to Hitler.

“You saw the rally in Ohio the other night,” added Clinton, the former first lady, senator and secretary of state. “Trump is there ranting and raving for more than an hour, and you have these rows of young men with their arms raised.” She didn’t quite say it, but the implied message was clear: These crazy Trump supporters wanted to say, “Heil Hitler.”

At least President Joe Biden doesn’t call his political adversaries fascists. They are only “semifascists.” What a relief.

Aren’t these the same people who have urged raising the level of civil discourse? Wasn’t Biden supposed to “unify” the country with Trump out of the picture?

What is so infuriating about these slurs is that the Left doesn’t even understand what a fascist is. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, fascism is “a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government.” The Britannica Dictionary defines fascism as “a way of organizing a society in which a government ruled by a dictator controls the lives of the people and in which people are not allowed to disagree with the government.”

Let all that sink in for a minute. Who are the fascists here? A government that “controls the lives of the people.” Let’s see — we have a group of politicians who shut down schools, businesses, restaurants and churches during COVID-19. A government that is now telling us what kind of light bulbs we can put in our homes, what temperature we can set our thermostat in our living rooms, what kind of car we can buy and what kind of drugs we need to be inserted into our arms.



Who is the leader who is vastly supersizing our centralized government? Biden and congressional Democrats have already spent $4 trillion expanding nearly all the power structures of government in Washington. If this isn’t fascistic, what is?

But here’s the rub. The definition of “fascism” has gradually been evolving over time. Nowadays, according to the Collins Dictionary, fascism “is a set of right-wing political beliefs that includes strong controls of society and the economy by the state” (emphasis added).

By this definition, leftists can’t be accused of being fascists because they want to use government for virtuous ends, while the Right wants to use government to further enrich the rich, spread racism and deny science.

What we have here is a clinical case of “projecting.” Democrats and other leftist parties around the world accuse the Right of wanting to expand government powers when that is precisely the overriding objective of the modern-day American Left.

It is prototypically fascistic. Elevate race and skin color into the public debate. Trample civil liberties. Squash those who disagree with the reigning government. Partner up Big Government with Big Business and micromanage the economy through dictates from the central planners. Put your political enemies in handcuffs and jail without a trial. Trample over the traditional guardrails that were installed to protect liberty — by changing voting rules, ending the 60-vote filibuster in the Senate and discrediting and trying to pack the Supreme Court. Declare everything, including COVID-19 and climate change, an existential threat to justify more power to the politicians.

So what is a fascist really? The Left says it is anyone who opposes what they want to do to expand government.

But the real definition of a fascist is a leader who wants to exploit governmental power to suppress the basic liberties of individuals. It is the partnership of government and private industry for political power and monetary gain. To find it in modern-day America, the folks at the (Biden) White House may want to look in the mirror.

Source: https://www.takimag.com/article/who-are-the-neofascists/print

Democrat Woke Fascism

Submitted by Doug1ness.

The Democrat Party of the USA is underpinned by the Common Features of Fascism, expounded upon by Umberto Eco (The 14 Principles of Fascism).

1. The cult of tradition. Leaders in the Democrat make the claim for authentication from recent historic civil rights laws and leaders. For example, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the Wade vs Roe abortion laws.

2. The rejection of modernism. Science is easily ignored and irrationalism is embraced. This is evident when physical reality and biological science is overturned in favour of personal, emotional truths. For example, claiming that there are more than 52 genders instead of only two – male and female.

3. The cult of action for action’s sake. Reaction and perpetual revolution is the sign of a neo-Marxist solution. Thinking is seen as a form of emasculation and when confronted by their their thoughtless deeds, Democrats are unable to refute their critics.

4. Disagreement is treason. As is evident with the banality of cancel culture and the demonization of conservatives.

5. Fear of difference. Any political, religious or ideological difference will not be tolerated.

6. Appeal to social frustration. According to intersectional theory, the greater the perception of oppression of a group, the greater their inherent power for social change.

7. The obsession with a plot. Such obsession includes Trump’s Russian collusion (proven to be a hoax) and the January 6 insurrection plot (with no evidence).

8. The enemy is both strong and weak. Ultra MAGA and conservatives are seen as an existential threat to the nation and yet often down graded as feeble minded and a minority.

9. Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. Any person who denies the neo-Marxist woke agenda is open game for attack. Recently a 61 year old grandmother was arrested for attending the rally on January 6. Bakers have been persistently persecuted for refusing to a make a cake for a gay wedding on religious grounds.

10. Contempt for the weak. The elite use the popularity of the poor and yet despise the poor at the same time. They find it hard to accept that most people do not have the wealth to embrace climate ideology and purchase expensive electric cars or install solar panels.

11. Everybody is educated to become a hero. One is now a brave hero by standing up for gender, race and woke ideologies. Nothing needs to be accomplished, one just needs to show one’s support.

12. Selective populism. Social media influencers and celebrities represent a select minority and yet are envisioned to be the voice of the people.

13. Newspeak. Vocabulary is impoverished and limited in “order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning.” The sterilisation of language to make it politically correct and the use of woke pronouns is a sign of newspeak.

All thirteen signs are evident within the Democrat party, implying that they are fascists as well as socialists. One principle that is not shown is machismo – that is because they adore everything sexually perverse and abhor traditional gender roles. They display an inherent hatred of women, though, whenever they place women’s rights as less important than that of an intersectionally oppressed group.

Thirty-three Problems With Media In One Chart


BY TYLER DURDEN

One of the hallmarks of democratic society is a healthy, free-flowing media ecosystem.

In times past, that media ecosystem would include various mass media outlets, from newspapers to cable TV networks. Today, the internet and social media platforms have greatly expanded the scope and reach of communication within society.

Of course, journalism plays a key role within that ecosystem. High quality journalism and the unprecedented transparency of social media keeps power structures in check—and sometimes, these forces can drive genuine societal change. Reporters bring us news from the front lines of conflict, and uncover hard truths through investigative journalism.

That said, as Visual Capitalist’s Nick Routley and Carmen Ang detail below, these positive impacts are sometimes overshadowed by harmful practices and negative externalities occurring in the media ecosystem.

The graphic below is an attempt to catalog problems within the media ecosystem as a basis for discussion. Many of the problems are easy to understand once they’re identified. However, in some cases, there is an interplay between these issues that is worth digging into. Below are a few of those instances.

problems-with-media-chartDownload

Explicit Bias vs. Implicit Bias
Broadly speaking, bias in media breaks down into two types: explicit and implicit.

Publishers with explicit biases will overtly dictate the types of stories that are covered in their publications and control the framing of those stories. They usually have a political or ideological leaning, and these outlets will use narrative fallacies or false balance in an effort to push their own agenda.

Unintentional filtering or skewing of information is referred to as implicit bias, and this can manifest in a few different ways. For example, a publication may turn a blind eye to a topic or issue because it would paint an advertiser in a bad light. These are called no fly zones, and given the financial struggles of the news industry, these no fly zones are becoming increasingly treacherous territory.



Misinformation vs. Disinformation
Both of these terms imply that information being shared is not factually sound. The key difference is that misinformation is unintentional, and disinformation is deliberately created to deceive people.

Fake news stories, and concepts like deepfakes, fall into the latter category. We broke down the entire spectrum of fake news and how to spot it, in a previous infographic.

Simplify, Simplify
Mass media and social feeds are the ultimate Darwinistic scenario for ideas.

Through social media, stories are shared widely by many participants, and the most compelling framing usually wins out. More often than not, it’s the pithy, provocative posts that spread the furthest. This process strips context away from an idea, potentially warping its meaning.

Video clips shared on social platforms are a prime example of context stripping in action. An (often shocking) event occurs, and it generates a massive amount of discussion despite the complete lack of context.

This unintentionally encourages viewers to stereotype the persons in the video and bring our own preconceived ideas to the table to help fill in the gaps.

Members of the media are also looking for punchy story angles to capture attention and prove the point they’re making in an article. This can lead to cherrypicking facts and ideas. Cherrypicking is especially problematic because the facts are often correct, so they make sense at face value, however, they lack important context.

Simplified models of the world make for compelling narratives, like good-vs-evil, but situations are often far more complex than what meets the eye.

The News Media Squeeze
It’s no secret that journalism is facing lean times. Newsrooms are operating with much smaller teams and budgets, and one result is ‘churnalism’. This term refers to the practice of publishing articles directly from wire services and public relations releases.

Churnalism not only replaces more rigorous forms of reporting—but also acts as an avenue for advertising and propaganda that is harder to distinguish from the news.

The increased sense of urgency to drive revenue is causing other problems as well. High-quality content is increasingly being hidden behind paywalls.

The end result is a two-tiered system, with subscribers receiving thoughtful, high-quality news, and everyone else accessing shallow or sensationalized content. That everyone else isn’t just people with lower incomes, it also largely includes younger people. The average age of today’s paid news subscriber is 50 years old, raising questions about the future of the subscription business model.

For outlets that rely on advertising, desperate times have called for desperate measures. User experience has taken a backseat to ad impressions, with ad clutter (e.g. auto-play videos, pop-ups, and prompts) interrupting content at every turn. Meanwhile, in the background, third-party trackers are still watching your every digital move, despite all the privacy opt-in prompts.

How Can We Fix the Problems with Media?
With great influence comes great responsibility. There is no easy fix to the issues that plague news and social media. But the first step is identifying these issues, and talking about them.

The more media literate we collectively become, the better equipped we will be to reform these broken systems, and push for accuracy and transparency in the communication channels that bind society together.

* * *

Visual Capitalist is raising funds to build The VC App – the first of its kind, combining verifiable and transparent data with beautiful, memorable images. Back them now.

Source: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/33-problems-media-one-chart

Is the Left a Satanic Cult?

By the Moderator.

The video below explores how the Leftist ideology embraces the notion of self-worship and how objective reality is ignored in the quest to subject reality to the sinful, human will.

Jeremiah 17:9-10

” The heart is deceitful above all things,
And desperately wicked;
Who can know it?
I, the LORD, search the heart,
I test the mind,
Even to give every man according to his ways,
According to the fruit of his doings.”

The Dark Spirit of Post-Modernism and the Woke Left.

By the Moderator



The Spirit of Resentment, Arrogance and Deceit forms the basis of post modernism. This spirit seeks to destroy individuality and logic. By doing so, individual arguments are unimportant compared to group identity politics. This spirit seeks to dismantle society and religious belief to foster a new tyranny.

After much reflection and philosophical thought, self-directed dialectical discussion and associated analytical research, the following conclusion has been attained, and is self-evident in what has taken place.


First, that the Left (as the evidence continues to inform) gives the appearance of being selfless, equanimous and good while simultaneously sacrificing individual self-respect and responsibility.

As the evidence of behaviours informs the Left is a broad church (pun intended) that festers corruption and a multitude of evils. The most recent being the investigated and discovered sixty plus million dollar corruption of the BLM. And the presented evidence of Hillarygate, and the ongoing investigation and what is being found pertaining to Hunter Biden.

The Left continually proclaims a form of individualism whilst using violent and government based authoritarian methods to silence opposing views and cultures.


The Left demands, yes it demands, to be respected whilst refusing to give respect.


The Left both overtly and covertly lies and deceives without any thought of integrity or the truth.


The Left is responsible for over a hundred million deaths in over 100 years. It was the birthplace of communism and the national socialist party (Nazism). In comparison, the Spanish Inquisition resulted in 32 thousand deaths over two hundred years.

The results of Leftist ideology speak for itself – constant revolution and destruction.


Second, the Right, though not perfect, tolerates open discussion (there is no cancel culture within the Right).


The Right encourages traditional values and enforces a justice system that holds individuals as accountable.


Morality, respect for previous generations and history is encouraged, instead of constant revisionism and protestation and outright deceit.

The fact is that in terms of respect and integrity; respect and integrity is earned through merit, not because of an intersectional identity badge, which has now become one of the major badges the Left now wears on its bloated chest of ineptitudes.


The Left continually now espouses and shouts out the words of white privilege. The fact of the matter is that there is no such thing. However, to discuss that point of view with a Marxist is totally and absolutely a waste of time. There would be more value in talking to a Scientologist.


Then there is history, which has been recorded by all cultures, both orally and in written form. However, the Left ignores history and is trying to rewrite history in its own deluded, dystopian and evil image.

To ignore history and the judgements of humanity over the past two, five, ten and even one hundred thousand years is to drown in a dark abyss of constant revolution. The fact of the matter as recent history informs the Left is far from the light and the truth that it tries to present. It is nothing but a vile and nihilistic evil the likes of which surpasses the evils of the past, because it is being done with the knowledge of what has taken place in the past. And the greatest evil the humanity has ever seen is where children are now being systematically abused in every vile manner conceivable with the worst being that Leftist are now targeting children, from the day they are born and the Left is telling the parents of the children, and the children themselves, as soon as they can talk that they are not the sex with which they were born. This vile, evil pursuit of children by the Left is sick beyond comprehension.

My hope, in all of the evil that is taking place by and through the actions of the Left, that society evolves from the blood-soaked, primordial depths of the Leftist ideology and enter into the light of western, Christian civilization, justice and cultural advancement; which was the society that I once knew.

  • Romans 1:18-21
    For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

When Everyone Kneels, Who Will Stand Up for Western History and Culture?

by Giulio Meotti

  • We are afraid that anything we do is colonial. There’s plenty of countries willing to step into that global governance gap: China, Iran, Russia, Turkey”. — Bruce Gilley, The Times, May 10, 2018.
  • British post-colonial guilt is, however, having repercussions far larger than statues. There is, for instance, still total silence about persecuted Christians, according to a UK bishop leading a government review into their suffering.
  • Western history is seemingly being remade to portray all of Western civilization as just one big apartheid. It is as if we should not only pull down statues but also pull down ourselves. A successful democracy, however, cannot be built on just erasing the past.
  • “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right”. — George Orwell, 1984.
  • What is this macabre ideological game aimed at accomplishing?… It is a power-grab to create a cultural revolution, to prevent anyone from saying that cultures are not all the same; to put Europe’s past on trial; to instill perennial remorse into consciences, and to spread intellectual terror to advance multiculturalism.
The statue in London of Winston Churchill — who stood against the Nazis during the Second World War and saved Europe from barbarism — was covered up by the city authorities during recent protests. Its visual erasure reminds one of the nude statues in Rome covered up to please Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, or the “disappearance” of portraits in the former Soviet Union. (Photo by Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images)

“Antiracism is no longer the defense of the equal dignity of people, but an ideology, a vision of the world,” said the French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, son of Holocaust survivors.

“Antiracism has been transformed… At the time of the great migration, it is no longer a question of welcoming newcomers by integrating them into European civilization, but exposing the faults of this civilization”.

He referred to “self-racism” as “the most dismaying and grotesque pathology of our time”.

Its capital is London.

“Topple the racists” consists of a map with 60 statues in 30 British cities. The removal of the statues is being requested to support a movement born in the United States after a white policeman, Derek Chauvin, killed a black man, George Floyd, by kneeling on his neck.

In Bristol, a crowd pushed the statue of philanthropist and slave-owner Edward Colston into the harbor. The act was followed in London by protests vandalizing statues of Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln. London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan, after removing the monument to Robert Milligan, a Scottish slave trader, from outside the Museum of London Docklands, announced the creation of commission to review tearing down statues that do not reflect “the city’s diversity”. Two more statues were ordered to be removed from two London hospitals.

Vandalism and self-hatred are quickly gaining ground. The epic of great discoveries associated with British Empire has become shameful. The protests are not about slavery. No one in the UK today would cheer that period. It is rather a call for cultural cleansing of all the works contradicting the new mantra: “diversity”.

double-standardsDownload

“A new form of Taliban was born in the UK today”, wrote Nigel Farage, referring to two giant ancient Buddha statue that were blown up by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001. “Unless we get moral leadership quickly our cities won’t be worth living in”.

The list of statues to be removed includes the names of Oliver Cromwell and Horatio Nelson, two major figures in British history, as well as Nancy Astor, the first woman to be elected to the British Parliament and take a seat in 1919. Also on the list were the names of Sir Francis Drake, Christopher Columbus and Charles Gray (the prime minister whose government supervised the abolition of slavery in 1833).

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, expressing opposition to the removal campaign, said:

“We cannot now try to edit or censor our past. We cannot pretend to have a different history. The statues in our cities and towns were put up by previous generations. They had different perspectives, different understandings of right and wrong. But those statues teach us about our past, with all its faults. To tear them down would be to lie about our history, and impoverish the education of generations to come.”

British post-colonial guilt is, however, having repercussions far larger than statues. There is, for instance, still total silence about persecuted Christians, according to a UK bishop leading a government review into their suffering. There is also, notably, a retreat from the world’s stage. “When the West loses confidence in itself, because of excessive or misplaced guilt over colonialism, it turns to isolationism”, noted Bruce Gilley, a professor of political science. “We are afraid that anything we do is colonial. There’s plenty of countries willing to step into that global governance gap: China, Iran, Russia, Turkey”.

Post-colonial guilt is also suffocating freedom of speech in the UK. The former British “equality watchdog” chief, Trevor Phillips, was suspended from the Labour Party after allegations of “Islamophobia”. Phillips’ guilt? Being critical of multiculturalism. According to Phillips:

“In my view, squeamishness about addressing diversity and its discontents risks allowing our country to sleepwalk to a catastrophe that will set community against community, endorse sexist aggression, suppress freedom of expression, reverse hard-won civil liberties, and undermine the liberal democracy that has served this country so well for so long.”

Phillips also claimed that British politicians and journalists are “terrified” of discussing race, thereby leaving multiculturalism to become a “racket” exploited by some to entrench segregation. A man of Guyanese origin, a Labour Party veteran and an equality commissioner spoke the truth to the multiculturalists.

The activists who campaign to remove the statues want radically to change the look of the British capital. The clash seems to consist of, on one side, violent censors who bully everyone, and on the other side, cowardly, appeasing politicians, who are afraid and bow to the vandals. Monuments are a vital and visible part of a global city; they embody their place in the history of a city, otherwise only bus stops and Burger Kings would remain there. These protestors appear to wish for a revised, sanitized history. If we do not quickly understand that, if we erase our past, as the former Soviet Union tried to do, it will be easier for people to create their vision of our future with no rudder to anchor us or our values. We will be left with nothing in our hands but shattered pieces of our history and culture.

This movement of hating the West — which has, as all of us do, an imperfect history — seems to have begun in British universities. In Cambridge, professors of literature asked to replace white authors with representatives from minorities to “decolonize” the curriculum. The student union of London’s prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) asked to remove Plato, Kant, Descartes, Hegel and others from the curriculum, because they were “all white” — as if the color of our skin should be the sole determinant of our thoughts. In Manchester, students painted over a mural based on Kipling’s poem “If”.

A scholar of colonialism, Nigel Biggar, said that a “climate of fear” has returned to British universities. The University of Liverpool recently agreed to rename a building honoring former prime minister William Gladstone. At Oxford, meanwhile, the statue of Cecil Rhodes, philanthropist and founder of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), risks being the next to go.

“There is a bit of hypocrisy,” Lord Patten, the chancellor of Oxford, commented, “in Oxford taking money for 100 scholars a year, about a fifth of them from Africa, to come to Oxford, and then saying we want to throw the Rhodes statue… in the Thames”. He said that his own view remained the same as one “expressed by Nelson Mandela at a celebration of the Rhodes Trust in 2003”: that despite the “problems associated with Cecil Rhodes in history, if it was alright for Mandela, then I have to say it’s pretty well alright for me”. But not for the revisionists.

Western history is seemingly being remade to portray all of Western civilization as just one big apartheid. It is as if we should not only pull down statues but also pull down ourselves. But a successful democracy, cannot be built on just erasing the past.

The statue in London of Churchill — who stood against the Nazis during the Second World War and saved Europe from barbarism — was covered up by the city authorities during recent protests. Its visual erasure reminds one of the nude statues in Rome covered up by authorities to please Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, or the “disappearance” of portraits in the former Soviet Union, of people whom the Politburo decided had fallen out of favor. There is a falsity in erasing one’s history. One may not have a perfect history, but it is one’s history, nevertheless. As the historian Victor Davis Hanson wrote, a country “does not have to be perfect to be good.” Excising the distasteful parts does not change what happened; they may even be replaced with parts that are more distasteful.

Some London museums already adopted this covering-up and self-censorship a while ago. The Tate Gallery in London banned a work by John Latham that displayed a Koran embedded in glass. The Victoria and Albert Museum showed, then withdrew, a devotional art image of Muhammad. The Saatchi Gallery featured two works of nudes overlaid with Arabic script, which prompted complaints from Muslim visitors; the museum covered the works. The Whitechapel Art Gallery purged an exhibit containing nude dolls.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary just revised the definition of “racism” to include “systemic racism”, presumably meaning that the entire society is guilty and unjust.

The censors seem to want to control our mental universe, as in George Orwell’s novel, 1984:

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right”.

This process of Western self-abasement began long ago. The Labour Party councils in the UK, for example, began to examine all the statues under their jurisdiction. The mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, instead of defending the rule of law, called the violent removal of the statue of Colston an act of “historical poetry“. When vandals started to destroy statues, many applauded. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called it “politically correct iconoclasm“.

A week before the statues row, people in the UK knelt in the name of George Floyd. It was as if there was a collective claim that Western society as a whole had to repent. It seemed a form of ideological hysteria, not so distant from that of the Inquisition or the Salem Witch Trials: those who knelt were presumably supposed appear as if they were more moral, on the “right side” of justice. There were even British policemen kneeling, as, in the US, Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats knelt to their overlords. Both were acts of irresponsibility and capitulation. A few days later, the British establishment kowtowed to the new Taliban.

What is this macabre ideological game aimed at accomplishing? Not taking down monuments as such, like the statues of Christopher Columbus which have been torn down or beheaded. It is more than that. It is a power-grab to create a cultural revolution, to prevent anyone from saying that cultures are not all the same; to put Europe’s past on trial; to instill perennial remorse into consciences, and to spread intellectual terror to advance multiculturalism.

How many people will refuse to go along with this coerced suppression of history? If many kneel to this new totalitarianism, who will have the courage to stand up for Western history and culture?

Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16118/western-history-culture-stand-up