This is hilarious 😀
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Am I Racist?October 10th, 2024 |
 22 comments to Am I Racist?Leave a Reply |
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Hilarious? Maybe? Terrifying? Definitely.
“Republicans are Nazis” — does she even know what a Nazi is?
“You cannot separate yourself from the bad white people” — unless you go to ridiculous dinner parties where a bunch of rich white ladies (with one token black lady) sit around being so “self aware” while being so utterly, utterly unself aware.
“Please leave” — apparently tolerance has its limits.
I’ve been around religious cults and cult leaders occasionally. This is exactly what cults are like.
Since I mention cults I did a quick search on what is a cult. Here are some of the traits they list. I’ll leave you to judge how they apply. Me? I think most of them. They don’t have one “leader” but plenty of people at the top of the hierarchy to whom this applies. As to 7, well cults usually aren’t allowed to censor the media (though you might consider what Scientology has done in this regard):
1. Absolute authoritarianism without accountability
2. Zero tolerance for criticism or questions
3. Lack of meaningful financial disclosure regarding budget
4. Unreasonable fears about the outside world that often involve evil conspiracies and persecutions
5. A belief that former followers are always wrong for leaving and there is never a legitimate reason for anyone else to leave
6. Abuse of members
7. Records, books, articles, or programs documenting the abuses of the leader or group
8. Followers feeling they are never able to be “good enough”
9. A belief that the leader is right at all times
10. A belief that the leader is the exclusive means of knowing “truth” or giving validation
I’ve seen it & it’s so well done, wincingly hilarious. Damn, this man does the best deadpan I’ve ever seen.
I want to see this movie, but then again I don’t.
I suspect I’d leave it depressed at how much worse things really are – vis-a-vis racial socialization – than I see in day-to-day life.
And it strikes me – even watching this trailer – that this is mostly a mean girls effort.
We’ve transformed an entire generation of single American women into Azimov’s Honored Matres. Ruthess predators out for personal validation, humanity-be-damned.
Oops. Herbert’s Honored Matres.
Another hit from Handwaving Freakoutery: Autistic Rationalist Goes to DEI Training
Of course I’m racist. I’m white. No escaping that, I’ve been told I was racist nearly all my life, who am I to argue? The fun discussion is whether or not I’m sexist. And if so, how?
Sir Karl Popper argued that Marxism was not scientific because its basic claims were not testable – that is NOT true about Classical Marxism (the stuff that Karl Marx taught and which was carried on by “Stalin” and the rest – for it is not true that they “betrayed” Classical Marxism, in fact they carried on with it as faithfully as it was possible to do so) as Classical Marxism makes a series of claims that can be tested – the problem is that its claims are FALSE, so it is a “scientific theory” but a FALSE scientific theory.
All this changes with “Frankfurt School”, “Cultural”, “Critical Theory”, or “Woke” Marxism – no longer are we presented with clear claims about economics and history, instead there is the weird Marxist mush that Matt Wash has shown us – first in his film “What Is A Woman?” and now in this film “Am I A Racist?”.
Modern Marxism (yes it goes all the way back to 1920s Germany – but Frankfurt School “Woke” Marxism has only started really dominating society in recent years) was designed (yes designed) to be mush – to be untestable, to be what Sir Karl Popper would, rightly, call “unscientific”.
Why so? Well some leading Marxist thinkers knew by the 1920s (if not before) that the basic claims of Classical Marxism were wrong – that they were false. So, at this point, they could either abandon Marxism or abandon reason – abandon rationality. As Marxism was the only thing that gave their lives meaning – they choose the latter alternative, to abandon reason, to abandon rationality.
Cultural Marxism is not irrational by accident – it is irrational by design, so that Critical Theory doctrines such as “Anti Racism” or “Anti Sexism” or whatever, can not be refuted, or even really examined by “capitalist reason” (really just reason) – it is all MEANT to be crazy, so pointing out it is crazy would not have bothered the creators of it at all.
And it has been astonishingly successful – it has got people, in basically all cultural institutions – public and and private, working for the Marxist objective of the destruction of Western society – whilst NOT even knowing they are working for a Marxist objective.For example, General Milley pushing Marxist works on “White Rage” and when asked (by a Congressional committee) why he is doing this, not even understanding that these works are Marxist agitprop – agitation propaganda, and thinking that such works are an ideal guide for young military officers (and, of course, it would never occur to him to suggest that officers read books that oppose these doctrines – as it would be “racist” for officers to read anti Marxist works, just as it would be “sexist”, “homophobic”, “transphobic” and “Islamophobic” for officers, or corporate managers, to read anti “Woke” books – indeed they should be dismissed for doing so).
Herbert Marcuse (if he was still alive), and the others, would note (and with a sense of triumph) that most of the critics of this movement do not even clearly understand that it is Marxist and that it is designed to destroy the West.
And basically every Western government and large corporation is pushing Critical Theory “Woke” Marxism – under such names as DEI, EDI, and-so-on.
Matt Walsh may mock it, and mock it very well, but it carries on its work of the extermination of the West.
And to oppose the extermination of the West is to be “racist”, “sexist”, “homophobic”, “transphobic”, “Islamophobic” and-so-on – and people who are things dreadful things should be PUNISHED not listened to.
A Classical Marxist does such things as argue for the Labour Theory of Value – which can be shown to be wrong. But a Critical Theory or “Woke” Marxist screams “RACIST”(or “sexist” or “homophobe” or “transphobe” or “Islamophobe” – and so on) in your face and demands that you are dismissed from your employment and punished in other ways – and anything you say in reply just means you are even more evil and deserve even harsher punishment.
Amusing? Perhaps – till the Critical Theory or “Woke” Marxists come-for-you – demand that you are dismissed from your employment, banned from XYZ, sent to prison, and so on. And establishment “conservatives” (“RINOs” in America) rush to AGREE with the “Woke” Marxists – for fear of being called “racists”, or whatever, themselves.
What Matt Welch is doing is a valuable part of the cultural fightback & the fact it is funny as hell is what makes it so effective.
I’m not picking a fight but I suspect that no economic theory is strictly speaking falsifiable in the sense that maths or hard sciences are.
I think it is useful to explain and point out how batshit insane, and often plain evil, a lot of current ideological activity is on much of the Left.
Most of the shitheads who are nicely skewered on this programme will not have the grit to look at themselves in the mirror to understand what is going on. But these programmes are not going to convert them. What it will do is wake up normal, reasonably intelligent people to the cesspit of what @Paul Marks of this parish refers to as Frankfurt School ideology, and how it is not some weird minority pastime, but an intellectual cancer.
Walsh is doing good work and making people laugh at the same time. He’s not PJ O’Rourke, – no-one alive today is in his class. But this is pretty good.
Paul Marks: you need to get a copy of the DIM Hypothesis, by Leonard Peikoff. I think it is a brilliant book, and raises uncomfortable questions on where we are headed, and the damage caused by centuries of crappy, anti-reason/anti-reality philosophy. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Dim-Hypothesis-Lights-West-Going/dp/0451466640
Spoiler alert – Plato and Kant were terribly wrong and led humanity down the wrong path, although Plato was a genius.
JP,
That’s a spoiler! Plato was wrong (about a lot) and Kant is just unreadable. Perhaps not as bad as Hegel or Heidegger…
Perry – yes indeed.
Johnathan Pearce – you make a lot of good points, and I will buy the book.
NickM – it is possible to falsify an economic theory, both by logical means (showing that it is just wrong – as in mathematics) and by empirical means – and Marxism fails either way. And I do mean Classical Marxism – the difference between Classical Marxism and “Critical Theory” or “Woke” doctrine (going back to Herbert Marcuse and so on) – is that Classical Marxism is a series of theories, on history as well as economics, that can be shown to be wrong – whereas “Woke” Marxism is (deliberately) a poisonous mist with gibbering lunatics screaming “racist!”, “”sexist!”, “homophobe!”, “Islamophobe!” (and so on) and trying to rip your throat out.
By the way….. Marxism is not always hidden.
Just today, in my average English town, I pulled down two full size Marxist posters (Revolutionary Communist Party), defaced another one (because I could not get it off the surface it was stuck on) – removing the head of “Lenin” and the words, and got rid of about a dozen Marxist stickers – with, for example, the Communists (with hammer and sickle badge) expressing their support for “Palestine”. None of this stuff (none of it) was on a notice board – it was all defacing other things, and had no right to be there.
This was not an unusual day. Indeed I dread going into town – seeing all the hate filled Marxist posters and stickers, put up by those who want to torture me (and everyone like me) to death. As fast as I get rid of them – new posters and stickers go up.
So it is not always disguised as “anti racism” or whatever – sometimes the Devil does not disguise himself at all.
A person recently got two years in prison for political stickers – but I suspect that the people who put up Marxist stickers celebrating the mass murderer “Lenin” and demanding that Israel, some seven million Jews, be exterminated, would get no prison time at all.
Our charming prosecution system and courts are very “two tier” when it comes to such matters.
The true measure of a philosopher is not being right or wrong, but the concepts that he* introduces; and, perhaps even more, the problems that he* raises.
* or, less often, she
By that measure, i reckon that Aristotle and Plato probably deserve their place as the most important Western philosophers, as measured in Charles Murray’s Human Accomplishment.
Although they were minor influences on me.
— Kant is a special case, since his status in 3rd place in Murray’s ranking is partly (mostly?) due to his influence on other philosophers that i am wary of, such as Fichte, Hegel, and Schopenhauer.
Still, i do not think that there is nothing in Kant worth saving.
And there might, just possibly, be something worth saving in Fichte, Hegel, and Schopenhauer. (!!!!!)
Snorri,
“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.”
-Alfred North Whitehead
As far as I’m aware the one thing I thought of great value in Kant is his complete deconstruction of Descartes’ Cogito/
But anyway these are all dead white males so clearly evil and useless compared to the spectaular Oneness of the non-binary poly-gendered neuro-diverse true thinkers.
NickM
If you mean – “I think therefore I am” a thought meaning there is a thinker, then neither Kant or Hume destroyed this truth, regardless of how much ink and paper they may have used. Nor did Descartes invent this – it had been known for thousands of years.
Kant did not just write long books – he also wrote letters and essays, so did most philosophers, Skinner (Cambridge) produced a series of books of the shorter writings of the philosophers and their historical context, and this can be a better (or at least different) way of approaching them.
Almost like a Medieval thinker, Kant did not like to just reject a thinker as totally wrong – he liked to try and find insights in other thinkers and to combine then and to seek to go beyond them – that indeed does make his work difficult.
I agree with Snorri that we all start with Plato and Aristotle – between them they ask the questions. I certainly enjoyed reading their works.
Asked the questions on both general philosophy and political philosophy.
Although we should remember that Plato and Aristotle had access to works that are now lost – indeed many ancient thinkers are only remembered because Plato and Aristotle mentioned them.
We can not just assume that what survived from the Classical world was “the best”.
The best works (on some matters) may be unpopular – have few copies made, so when civilisation falls, they are lost.
As for the natural sciences – Plato (famously) did not really have the interest in experimental sciences, and in physically examining things, that Socrates (and thinkers before him) seems to have had (Socrates is portrayed in a play of the time as covered in mess from his experiments and examinations) – Aristotle did have this interest in the physical sciences, but (as NickM knows) sometimes went down the wrong road.
Aristotle can not be blamed for the later stagnation of the physical sciences – he came up with the best theories he could, it never occurred to him (why would it?) that his scientific theories would later be treated as a sort of dogma. Certainly in his own day other thinkers had no problem with arguing against him (and he expected that).
If Aristotle returned and could understand modern languages, I think he would be interested in Appenzell Innerrhoden – the farmers and craftsmen and merchants (the free people – armed) meeting every year to govern themselves, sounds like his description of the best sort of polity we are likely to get. Although he offered advice to all forms of polity.
Plato would still be looking for his ideal, mathematically planned, top-down society – and finding only horror when people tried to create it.
But Plato had many great insights – for example he called the sort of polity that Aristotle was later to like, “a city of pigs” – and this was NOT an insult, it meant that it was a polity of people mostly interested in their own undertakings (such as raising pigs) – and not in the great question of creating a new sort of person (his dream)_- but Plato accepted that a polity of independent farmers and craftsmen and merchants was better than what Athens had become – an urban mob dependent on payments (payments they got from participating in politics and government).
The slave worked silver mines could not produce enough money for this mob – so Pericles and others laid tribute on the Allies of Athens (tribute that was spent in Athens – on building works and on just paying voters), thus turning Allies into Enemies (to the ruin of Athens). It was all done again, on a vastly bigger scale, with late Republic Rome.
Plato rightly understood that this form of democracy (the sort of democracy Athens had become) collapses into tyranny.
Aristotle was later to call this paying people benefits from the Treasury – pouring liquid into a container with no bottom on it.
Yes, NickM, Whitehead was the main inspiration for my comment on Plato.
Two of the basic principles of Aristotle (although they were both understood long before his time) are that the moral agent (the self – the “I”) exists, and that the objective physical universe also exists (and can be studied).
Aristotle was correct on these points.
“A Classical Marxist does such things as argue for the Labour Theory of Value – which can be shown to be wrong.”
The issue with this statement is that, empirically, the “Labour Theory of Value” (or, Cost Theory of Value) is 100% correct.
Over time, given free market competition, price *always* tends towards cost. This is *not* up for grabs, and is provable.
In any given moment, sure, at a spot price notion, it’s “subjective”. But you’d have to pretty bloody daft to think that the pricing on a given Tuesday, given supply and demand, is representative of the True Price. I *understand* it – it’s the sort of thinking that comes from someone who’s never actually priced something, but who has read some books.
The only time that price *doesn’t* tend towards cost, over time, is given government intervention.