Tal Bachman: What it Means to be “Woke”

 

For those who seek a good explanation of what it means to be “Woke,” musician Tal Bachman has some good answers (posted at Mark SteynOnline).  Here’s an extract:

. . .Through it all, a counterfeit moral imperative with a deceptively appealing name ("social justice") drives the cult. That counterfeit imperative casts all existence as one great battle between Good (Wokism) and Evil (everything that is not Woke). It denies any constraints on efforts to win that battle. It entails an obsessive totalitarianism. It forbids critical self-examination of itself. Adherents of the cult are Knowers of the One True Truth. They are crusaders in righteous battle. Only victory matters. Anyone so much as questioning the One True Truth, inside or out, must be destroyed.

Although this is often denied to outsiders, Wokist theology requires hatred of America. It teaches that America was conceived in sin and remains insufferably sinful. It therefore decrees that America deserves execution and cremation into nothingness. Into that newly-created void, Wokism itself must move. Only then will righteousness prevail. Making this happen is a sacred obligation for all cult members. Their great success shows their sincerity.

It's worth mentioning that while Wokists want to destroy the United States of America, they don't mind the name. For now anyway, they want to keep it. Retention of the name "The United States of America" works as a kind of soporific: it helps obscure what they're actually doing.

And what they're actually doing is something like an Invasive Parasite Play: While keeping the outer forms (like the country's name, like "elections", etc.) intact, they move in to co-opt and control the structures and institutions which really run the country (which is to say, the structures and institutions which control us). As a result, millions remain oblivious that Wokists are destroying and replacing everything that ever constituted the country—that is, that they are changing what 'The United States of America' actually is.

Among many other things, that means first targeting public order, buildings, cities, fair trials, public trust, careers, police forces, education, laws, educations, freedom of speech and religion and assembly and press, codes of ethics, corporate practices, borders, political boundaries, the military, the economy, demography, religious beliefs, customs, music, books, myths, movies, family dynamics, sexuality, heroes, villains, history, aspirations, everything, and then, wherever possible, either destroying them or replacing them with Wokist substitutes.

I mentioned above the analogy of an invasive parasite, but this play is really something even more ambitious. It's a metamorphosis play, where infiltration, destruction, and replacement is followed by transforming the United States into some completely different entity altogether. That different entity is on track to resemble the former East Germany—a totalitarian puppet-state run by a lawless secret police, subservient to a greater foreign power—far more than any iteration of America throughout its history.

How did we get here? How have so many people—especially Millennials—fallen for a cheap, Marx-inspired, totalitarian deception?

The full column is here.

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Black Lives Matter’s Corporate Funding

 

Jay Greenberg at Neonnettle reports:

Black Lives Matter Is Funded by These 18 Corporations

The main Black Lives Matter organization, founded by “trained Marxists,” calls for replacing the nuclear family with a “village,” and abolishing police, prisons, and law courts.  

Despite the extreme goals of BLM, some of America’s largest corporations have pledged or donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the far-left group.

Prominent brands, including Amazon, Microsoft, Nabisco, Gatorade, Airbnb, and the Atlantic and Warner record labels, have helped to fund the organization with massive donations.

. . .

For more details and the rest of the report, click here.  More reasons to not drink Gatorade, etc.

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The Great Barrington Declaration says to end the lockdown

 

James Arlandson at American Thinker reports:  

Over 18,000 (and growing) medical public health scientists and medical practitioners have signed the Great Barrington Declaration, pleads with the various governments around the world to end the lockdowns and open the economy. As of right now, over 166,000 members of the general public have also signed the petition.

Here are some key points: 

Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and long-term public health. ...

Keeping these measures in place until a vaccine is available will cause irreparable damage, with the underprivileged disproportionately harmed. ...

Fortunately, our understanding of the virus is growing. We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young. Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms, including influenza. ...

Those who are not vulnerable should immediately be allowed to resume life as normal ...

Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching.

Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed. 

Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home.  

Restaurants and other businesses should open.

Follow the science? Everyone knows why the democrat states continue the lockdown, long past the curve being flattened back in April, which was the original goal.

Read the rest here.

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Woke vs. awoken

photo credit: foxnews

From guest blogger Pat:

Leo Terrell was woke but now he has awoken. He's not alone.

People are seeing the destruction wrought on major American cities by looters and rioters, led by Antifa shock troops armed with hammers, bear spray, blinding lasers, commercial fireworks, Molotov cocktails, and more while protected by shields, helmets, industrial quality gas masks and the ability to blend into a larger crowd of BLM protesters for protection. 

The MSM [mainstream media] support Antifa and BLM and hide from public view the violence committed by those radical groups. When Rep. Jim Jordan showed a video of the violence at a House Judiciary Committee hearing in Congress, the MSM cut away. The head of the Committee, one Jerrold Nadler, flat out denied that the protests were anything but peaceful.

But, the MSM no longer has a monopoly on the news. Citizen journalists, bloggers, talk radio and even local TV channels are reporting on the destruction, which largely impacts poorer neighborhoods. The locals are figuring out that the white Antifa radicals that attacked their local supermarket, drugstore and police precinct are not fighting to improve their lives. Nor are the mobs that follow, under the umbrella of BLM, that loot and destroy these neighborhood foundations. 

BLM, Antifa and the MSM may be the woke darlings of today's Democrat party but they have awoken a silent coalition of all races and creeds that rejects divisive rhetoric and violence and wants a civil society restored. Despite the best efforts of the woke tech giants, it will be restored on November 4th, 2020.

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David Horowitz on the wolf in sheep's clothing

David Horowitz

Many of my relatives and friends are in a state of alarm over George Floyd’s death.  They are sufficiently upset to voice their support for Black Lives Matter, even though nobody knows if race was a motive in police officer Derek Chauvin’s knee-on-neck restraint.  Nevertheless, Black Lives Matter and its offshoots are employing aggressive tactics to increase the scope of their influence.  

But nothing is at it seems.  A go-to source on the history of Black Lives Matter and its core mission is David Horowitz.  He posted on the subject recently at FrontPage Magazine.  Highly recommended if you know anyone who is attracted to Black Lives Matter out of guilt or sympathy or a misunderstanding.  Here’s a short extract (numbers in brackets indicate a footnote in the article):

The power of Black Lives Matter stemmed from its exploitation of the ideology of oppression – Identity Politics – a ready-made indictment looking for a crime. Black Lives Matter was at the center of a very large network, including hundreds of leftist organizations sharing the same vision. Among them: The Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Dream Defenders, Hands Up United, Black Left Unity Network, Black Workers for Justice, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Right to the City Alliance, School of Unity and Liberation, Dignity and Power Now, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, Causa Justa/Just Cause, Organization for Black Struggle, Communist Party USA, Showing Up for Racial Justice, and others.

Many of these organizations are funded by America’s largest corporations and philanthropies, including the Ben & Jerry Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Margaret Casey Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and George Soros’s Open Society Institute.

. . .

Black Lives Matter was formed in 2013 by three self-styled “Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries,” who selected as their movement icon convicted cop-killer and Black Liberation Army member Assata Shakur.[4] Shakur had fled to Cuba after being convicted of the homicide she committed when her car was stopped for a broken tail-light by two New Jersey state troopers. Without any warning, Shakur shot trooper Werner Foerster. The 34-year- old Vietnam veteran was lying wounded on the ground pleading for his life, when Shakur walked over and executed him. Officer Foerster left a widow and a three-year-old son.[5] Black Lives Matter activists refer to the murderer as “our beloved Assata Shakur” and chant her words as a ritual, “at every meeting, every event, every action, every freeway we’ve shut down, every mall we’ve shut down.” [6] The chant is this: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love and support one another. We have nothing to lose but our chains.” The last line is lifted directly from the conclusion to the Communist Manifesto, a document and war cry that has led to the murders of millions.[7]

. . .

The full account is here.

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Propaganda vs expanded sources of news

image credit: vectorstock.com

Cherie Zaslawsky’s article, “Trump Derangement Syndrome: A Misdiagnosis” starts off:

Listen to Fox News, and you'll hear phrases such as “Trump derangement syndrome” and “liberal heads are exploding” on a daily basis. 

Conservative newscasts are peppered with comments like these: “They're delusional!”  “The Democrats just can't seem to accept that they lost the 2016 election.”  “They've gone crazy!”

Crazy like a fox.

. . .

From the beginning of its “long march through the institutions,” the Left has been playing the long game.  That hasn't changed.  Leftists are playing it today.

Why did they take over the media?  The universities?  Hollywood?  To get their hands on the key levers of propaganda.  Add to this the leftward tilt of Google, Facebook, and Twitter, and we're looking at a virtual lockdown on the primary sources of information and public influence.

. . .

What can be done?

I suggest that, rather than only responding to each of the Left's baseless attacks on our president, those on our side change the debate by exposing the radical leftists' use of propaganda — by shining a light into the dark recesses of their strategy.  This may wake up some of their followers and maybe even begin to free America from the dark power of the Left.

I have had limited success pointing the media’s corruption to people I know who still rely on The New York Times or NPR or CNN for their news. One suggestion that has worked a few times is to propose that a person expand their sources of news. Tuning in to conservative talk radio can be traumatic, but browsing through aggregators and at least comparing headlines has made a difference with some friends and relatives. These days my go-to sites are Politipage, Instapundit, Lucianne, and a few others (but not Drudge any more). Full American Thinker article is here.

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