On October 18 Diana West, the author of American Betrayal, was scheduled to give a lecture about Political Correctness in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. However, the local Progressive/Muslim alliance got wind of what she was up to, and tried to shut her down.
The event was sponsored by a group called Issues Confronting Our Nation (ICON), and was billed as part of the ICON Lecture Series: “Where Did “Politically Correct” Come from and What Is It Doing?” (Cultural Marxism in America). The title was enough to send the lefties into paroxysms of high dudgeon, and they exerted pressure on the venue — an outfit called Extraordinary Ventures — to cancel the lecture.
As Ms. West reported a few days later:
The strategy was to demonize and thus delegitimize me as a point of pressure to bear on the management of the venue, Extraordinary Ventures, to convince them to cancel my appearance and sever its standing business relationship with the ICON lecture series forevermore. However outrageous, such thuggish tactics have been successful before, as cancellations of many other events attest (up to and including Milo Yiannopoulos’s appearance this week at the University of Maryland, canceled over a hastily imposed security fee).
In this case the venue did not cancel, and the event went ahead as scheduled. Ms. West’s talk may be seen in its entirety in the video below. In addition to the fracas over her lecture, she talks about Marx, Lenin, the Fabians, the Frankfurt School, SDS, and the communist infiltration of America in the 1930s and ’40s.
The attempt to shut her down was apposite to her topic, and she spoke at length about the Left’s totalitarian aspirations as manifested in their efforts to silence any speech that might contradict the Narrative and offend the college students and bien-pensants who dominate public discourse in these early years of the 21st century.
Diana West didn’t use the term “snowflake” in her discussion, but I will. “Snowflake” is a relatively recent coinage designating those sensitive souls of a progressive mindset who absolutely cannot bear to hear opinions that disagree with their own. They consider it their right not to have such opinions impinge upon them, and have created “safe spaces” at most universities and colleges where free speech is restricted in order to protect the tender sensibilities of the snowflakes. The Gutmenschen have made it clear that they intend to expand these safe spaces to include the entire country, so that no one in that blissful dominion will ever be subjected to “hate speech”.
The subliminal message in these authoritarian exertions is that speech itself — the simple utterance of words — may be dangerous. Certain spoken or written expressions are so powerful and irresistable that they may prompt an impressionable listener to act in ways that are detrimental to the public good. Hence such speech must be suppressed.
This is where the thinking of Islam and the Multicultural Left converge. The content is different — Islam commands the death of those who refuse to submit to Allah, while the Left seeks to shun those who fail to utter the Progressive shibboleths — but the process is the same. Listeners are assumed to be automata without any agency. When they hear certain expressions, they will act in certain ways. They have no choice. They are not able to weigh information, analyze it, draw conclusions, and act accordingly. Any utterances that do not accord with Right Thinking must be kept from them, otherwise they might harm themselves or the collective.
Such is the mindset behind the attempt to shut down dissent. And this is why the Left and Islam have discovered so much common ground.
The following video contains the forbidden utterances spoken by Diana West in Chapel Hill:
Ms. West was premature in her assertions about ICON’s success against the forces of repression, because the organization that rented the venue for her talk found it expedient to apologize. As reported by The Herald Sun:
“This week Extraordinary Ventures finds itself unfortunately caught in the middle of a political discussion. To be clear, [EV] does not in any way, shape or form condone racism or hate messages,” Extraordinary Ventures managing director Paige Morrow said. “At the same time, as a business it cannot unilaterally cancel a contract without significant risk and consequences.
“The people of Extraordinary Ventures do apologize and promise to do a better job in the future vetting potential customers.”
This was a victory for the forces of PC: the venue conceded their obligation to vet any applicants who want to use their space, and to exclude those whose speech would be deemed hateful by the guardians of the Narrative.
One step forward, two steps back.
Peaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ is then next. John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the light. No one comes to the Father but through (by) me,” is narrow and exclusivist and therefore proscribed hate speech. How long until this is true Baron?
“The New Christianity” is already upon us. My neighborhood has several churches festooned with rainbow bunting, gay-friendly and Islam-friendly signs all around them. This is soon to be the only Approved Christianity.
“There is no sin.” “Don’t judge people.” “Any form of sexual activity is Love, so just shut up about your old morals.”
If you ask them, “What exactly did Jesus die for? Why are we told to repent? What sins are we to repent from?”
All they have to say is “Intolerance. That’s the only sin.”
so, I suppose that they will rewrite the Bible and the government will seal it with its Imprimatur and Nihil Obstat while ordering all other copies not so approved to be seized and burned.
If that is the future I am waiting all the more fervently for our blessed hope, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to come and meet is in the air and take us home.
War has been declared by Satan against the Church. The articles of war are to be found in the Demo(n)cratic Party’s Platform. Comey like as not had a gun (or two or even three) held to his head as he exonerated Mdme. Hillary-ous. The result is apt to be rioting on the part of both factions. This once great nation, ending with a bang and a whimper. Sniff! 🙁
Herds of useful idiots. But we have guns & they do not…
Probably one reason why the Left is trying so hard to import the third world wholesale into the West. They are violent (but cowardly) surrogates for that which the Left is incapable of doing themselves; namely using physical violence to impose their will upon those with whom they disagree. Leftists never do their own violence; they have their own private security and bodyguards who carry guns to defend them while they seek to disarm everyone else. They also coerce the organs of the state such as the police and various armed bureaucracies to do their dirty work since they are physically and tempermentally incapable of getting their hands dirty. In my opinion, it is the Achilles Heel of the Left.
You are absolutely right!
“The Silence of the Left” is real and takes as many forms as snakes on Medusa’s head. They are pushing too hard, too fast, and the backdraft is going to consume them much as it did in the Carter days when it became embarrassing to say you were a ‘liberal’ (thus ‘progressive’ was born). In an extreme scenario, even total eradication cannot be ruled out.
Don’t forget the Antifas, who are leftist brownshirts for the 21st century.
The Left never want to engage in intelligent debate, they just aim to shut down the questioner. Freedom of speech for a Lefty means “freedom to agree with me.”
She is right! Read her and cross-reference to THE BLACK BOOK OF COMMUNISM, rather than someone else’s self-justification of a career in teaching, the State Department, or media.
At the 14th Annual MAS-ICNA Convention, CAIR representative Nihad Awad states:
(snip)
These documented images could prove handy to illuminate the jihad links to BLM should violence break out again, as a result of this election.
How does one turn on the sound on these two linked-to videos? Must one follow the link to YouTube?
Apologies, Mark – I thought I also posted the link to the YouTube clip. . .here’s the link cued up for the quote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeM_l5mkyYc&t=11m57s
Transcript beginning at 49:00:
“… the kind of subversion that hostile ideologies bring to this country. Once upon a time people actually understood this, and they actually made ideological subversion a point at which you could deny entry among immigrants. If somebody’s ideological outlook was hostile to our country, wanted to overthrow our Constitution, they could be excluded. We still have that on the books, if I’m not mistaken. And this is kind of where you get to a lot of people believe in terms of arguing about whether Islamic immigration is excludable. You get to the ideological piece of it, and you see that it’s under the same rubric. If we ever get to a point, breaking through the political correctness, of actually seizing that tiger by the tail and trying to have a rational debate about it, and see what it is that we the people want to do, and have our elected officials do.”
No new legislation is needed to expel illegal immigrants. Congress, by the laws it passed years ago, already requires this. Nor is any new legislation need to exclude would-be immigrants who favor Constitution-replacing sharia. Such “extreme vetting” is already required.
Yes, this caught my attention as well. There is no new legislation needed to refuse entry to those that follow Islamic ideology.
The impediment is the MSM and the politicians wishing to destroy us.
I note the absurd gov’t discussion in Canada recently that is actually debating the wearing of the veil in public places, school houses, etc.
Can anyone even imagine these discussions going on just 20 years ago?
then the actions of the Obama administration have been in violation of the law, as the Circuit Court in Texas recently decided. So why aren’t the laws being more rigorously enforced for the health and safety of the citizenry?
Court rulings in the 1940s decided that Muslims cannot be citizens and could exclude Muslims from citizenship constitutionally.
Neither ruling was appealed to the Supreme Court. Both set precedents.
http://www.libertygb.org.uk/news/us-courts-have-ruled-muslims-cannot-be-us-citizens
Very informative so I shared it on Facebook in hopes my Liberal friends will watch it and learn about the lie they have been brainwashed with. I love that term ‘snowflake ” but I am not sure if I’ll have a chance to use it in my mostly conservative areas. Most of the young people around here seem aware. She taught me things in this lecture I didn’t know.
I take a different perspective.
The issue is pure political power. The left is going to exclude any dissenting opinion or facts, but not because they are afraid of being swayed. The Hillary voters are remarkably resilient to any display of facts concerning Hillary’s corruption, incompetence and lying. The swing voters making the difference in this election are the college-educated women and to a lesser extent, the college-educated millennials. No committed liberal is changed by the massive facts brought out during the campaign.
The huge push to exclude non-leftist expression is an expression of dominance, pure and simple. It’s like Muslims praying in the street and blocking traffic. They don’t really have to, but it shows who’s boss.
“The people of Extraordinary Ventures do apologize and promise to do a better job in the future vetting potential customers.”
Ever wonder why Hillary is running on a socialist ticket, but spends most of her time pandering to big bankers and corporate chieftains? And why the big bankers and establishment Republicans favor her so strongly? Because the person most likely to oppose the socialist, Marxist logrolling is the small, independent, successful businessman of wealth who only answers to himself…like, say, Donald Trump. The corporate socialists intend to make it impossible for an independent businessman to self-finance again: there will still be massive amounts of money to be made in business, but it will be the more passive, bureaucratic corporate climbers, akin to the faceless, bloodless leeches of the EU bureaucracies. And, they will always answer to the stockholders, which translates to massive holding companies.