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why does ‘diverse’ content spark backlash now when it didn’t before?

Several people have asked: why does ‘diverse’ content spark backlash now when it didn’t before?

I think it comes down to one thing: removal.

In the past, inclusionary moves didn’t try to clear out the previously enjoyed things. Kim Possible did not replace James Bond, she was just another secret agent you could watch alongside James Bond. In video games, serious action girls existed alongside miniskirted vixens, and everyone was fine with that. Avatar: The Last Airbender existed alongside Teen Titans. The Hunger Games existed alongside Harry Potter or Percy Jackson.

But now, the priority seems to be not addition, but subtraction.

It’s not enough to have a new Jedi; you have to remove the old ones. It’s not enough to have a female super-spy; you have to remove James Bond. It’s not enough to have serious action girls in your video game; you have to cover up or delete the vixens. It’s not enough to have new video games with modern sensibilities; you have to remove the old ones, or censor them in re-releases. It’s not enough to have new novels that fit modern ideological priorities; you have to censor the old ones.

Rawle Nyanzi, writing on TwitterX. I think he absolutely nails a key driver behind increasing radicalisation in the culture war.

11 comments to why does ‘diverse’ content spark backlash now when it didn’t before?

  • DiscoveredJoys

    It’s not enough to be diverse… my identity group must be on top.

    And when you consider the narrow definitions of identity group then the exclusion of ‘others’ is inevitable (and for no good reason).

  • Paul Marks

    “Replacement” used to be dismissed as a “paranoid conspiracy theory” – but now it is the open agenda.

    The entertainment industry, and the international establishment generally, have a fanatical hatred for white-straight-men (as capitalist “exploiters and oppressors”) and wish to see us humiliated, indeed no longer in this world – they seem to want us to be dead. And the haters include white-straight-men in the establishment – everyone from Bob Iger of the Disney Corporation, to General Milley, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the idiot who pushed the Marxist book on “White Rage” – even when questioned about it by a Congressional Committee).

    Bizarrely the establishment call this stuff “liberalism” – it is NOT liberalism, it is Critical Theory Marxism and it is insane that vast international corporations and government agencies (in almost all Western countries – and in the international bodies) are pushing it.

    Museums show that they do not “just” want white-straight-men to be dead – they want our real history to be forgotten. For example, in London there is a museum of ordinary life – it used to have interiors of the homes of ordinary Londoners over the decades and centuries, now there is not one interior of an ordinary English family in the museum. There are plenty of interiors – but, at least since the year 1830, they are of immigrant families – or include people who are not English.

    My own ancestors are shown in the museum – both Jewish and Irish immigrants (for example there is a 1913 interior which is very much like the home my father was born into in 1913), but the native ordinary English are not shown.

    This is not “inclusion” it is the EXCLUSION of the history of the people who were the overwhelming majority of the population of London till only a few decades ago. They, the English, have been shoved down the Memory Hole as if they never existed.

    Jews and Irish will be next – the Irish in Ireland are already seeing the history of Ireland reinterpreted to, falsely, claim that there have always been lots of black and brown people there (there were not) and that these people were exploited (they can not have been exploited – because they did not exist in Ireland, other than a handful). And increasingly Jews are the subject of hatred – Larry Fink of BlackRock has been funding radical leftist groups for many years – and is now horrified to discover that these groups hate Jews (Larry is Jewish).

    Larry Fink if you had taken your head out of your backside long enough to actually study the groups you have funded for so many years – you would have known that they always hated Jews as “capitalist exploiters”.

    The only leader in public life who is going to stand with the Jews when things get rough is Donald J. Trump – but do not tell Bob Iger or Larry Fink that, as “Trump is a capitalist reactionary”.

    And what do you think that the groups you have been backing for so many years think that YOU are?

    They think that you are “capitalist reactionaries” – after all you are straight-white-men and you are the heads of vast “capitalist” (well sort-of capitalist) corporations.

    They hate YOU (Bob, Larry and the rest) just as much as they hate “Trump” – and no amount of money or other support (such as making them hero figures in television shows and films) is going to change that. They hate you – they want to destroy you, try and get that into your heads.

    Save us from “liberal businessmen” – who are pushing their own destruction, and the destruction of their families, without even understanding what they are doing.

  • Paul Marks

    In Norway, and some other countries, governments are now putting taxpayer money into video games – Critical Theory “Woke” games (of course). That very few people presently want to buy these games, is considered not relevant.

    Also the great financial entities demand that privately funded video games follow Critical Theory Marxism DEI (EDI in the United Kingdom). And the financial entities do not seem to care about what CUSTOMERS want either.

    The idea seems to be that people will eventually buy leftist video games if no anti leftist video games are made – ditto television shows and films, and that “education” (indoctrination) will help in this task.

    And, after the breakdown of the present monetary and financial system (which may be as early as next year – 2025) Digital Money will mean that people have to spend their income on certain products – or watch the money vanish (easy enough – as the money never really existed in the first place, it is not gold or silver or any commodity, it is just lights on computer screens which the powerful can manipulate or just turn off).

    It is all supposed to be done by 2030 – it is utterly barmy (insane), but the international establishment are committed to the agenda.

  • Barbarus

    There is also the way that the Critical Theory Marxists are now quite open, indeed blatant, about their activities. No longer do we read a story or watch a film thinking “full of annoyingly wrong communist ideas, but overall, not a bad story”. Nowadays it’s ‘there we go again, another two hours of indoctrination disguised as entertainment”. This can even be about things we used to read/watch and enjoy, but are now tainted by the suspicion that they probably always were consciously intended as propaganda.

  • Fraser Orr

    I think it is more than just the “removal” aspect. There is a strong undertone of “look at me, I’m so righteous because I made a transexual lesbian the star of my show”, or, as happened recently “I am a good person because I approve of Victoria’s Secret using a transwoman model for their lingerie show.”

    In a sense I really don’t care what you do. It is the judgemental attitude that goes with it. The “I dare you to change the channel, you hater” or “how can you not love this wonderful celebration or diversity, you must be a bigot akin to Hitler”.

    I watched that movie about three black ladies who were “calculators” for NASA helping the original space program. I think those three ladies were amazing and deserve to be celebrated. Both just because of their raw talent and vital contributions, but also because you know that being black and female in the American South means they overcame A LOT to be the success that they were. And I really did enjoy the movie. But it left me with a bit of an uncomfortable feeling of someone jamming an agenda down my throat. Not because it wasn’t an amazing story, or a celebration of actual diversity, but just the whole climate that was designed to make be feel bad, or guilty, or responsible.

    The underlying message of the movie is “white people bad”, and “you need to commit to the BLM agenda” rather than the real message of these women’s lives — the great American dream is available to all from the lowliest and most oppressed to the high and mighty. The movie itself didn’t have that message. It is just the cultural zeitgeist it existed in. It was, on the contrary, a beautiful movie, beautifully made about three extraordinary women. I wish, instead, that the cultural lesson communicated rather by it was “look Black women, look what you can achieve. Look at your heroines, who, despite much worse situation than you, achieved an amazing thing.”

  • Lee Moore

    Competition is kryptonite to the Bolshevik. Trying to fill your mind with GOODTHINK is pointless until the BADTHINK has been removed. Think of Bolshevism as dentistry. Extraction first, the new and perfect future tooth comes later.

  • bobby b

    It used to be somewhat accepted wisdom that ingrained ideas and beliefs didn’t change within a person – rather, that the holders of those ideas gradually died off and the new generations simply didn’t ever grab hold of them.

    That takes too long. The new accepted wisdom is that, if we can keep old bad ideas from being discussed, thought about, used, or even acknowledged, humanity can move on that much quicker.

    Thus, we get clamp-downs on what we can say on social media, and new themes in movies and games.

    If there are no games or movies left in which old white guys are the heroes, society will never think about old white guys as heroes.

    It’s thinking straight out of 1917 Russia. Any new backlash comes because people are finally seeing it.

  • Mark

    The great replacement only works in the surreal world of advertising or media.

    In the real world – well, we all know the results.

    So do they, which probably explains their rage.

  • Lee Moore

    bobby b : It used to be somewhat accepted wisdom that ingrained ideas and beliefs didn’t change within a person – rather, that the holders of those ideas gradually died off and the new generations simply didn’t ever grab hold of them.

    That takes too long………

    Not necessarily.

    It’s thinking straight out of 1917 Russia.

    Those Bolshies had an answer to the problem of oldthinkers dying off too slowly.

  • Paul Marks

    Barbarus – yes the Marxist Critical Theory is open, blatant, now. Yet most “conservatives” in the English speaking world (and other Western countries) refuse to say what it is – they can not win the fight against something they are too cowardly to even name.

    Instead people on the establishment “right” attack (viciously attack) anyone who says that Critical Theory Marxism is Critical Theory Marxism – anyone who tells the truth. Indeed such establishment “right” types help the left “cancel” people for racism-sexism-homophobia-transphobia-Islamphobia, Marxists and the cowards of the establishment “right” call anyone who tells the truth an “ist” or a “phobe”.

    Without knowing it the establishment right, the “RINOs” in the United States, are digging their own graves – for after they have finished destroying real “right wingers”, the left will come for the establishment “right” (the RINOs) and for their families.

  • Paul Marks

    I missed out “Denier” – anyone who questioned Covid policies, or questions the C02 is evil theory, or “Net Theory”, is denounced as a “Denier” – and again the establishment “right” acts as echo chamber, a servant, of the left.

    No effort is made to examine what the “Denier” is saying, their evidence and arguments, they are just shouted down and then PUNISHED.

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