As a change of pace, our Swedish correspondent CB has prepared a report on the postmodern gender-normed absurdities that pass for learned academic discourse in 21st-century Sweden.
Fiddling While Rome Burns
by CB
Gates of Vienna readers will be familiar with the plight of Sweden, the country that — together with the UK and the Netherlands — leads the way into dissolution, chaos, widespread breakdown, and dhimmitude. Only last week, four malls in Södertälje — famous as the town that has accepted more Iraqi refugees than all of North America — burned down as local jihadis, aided and abetted by the extreme left wing organization “Global Intifada” — made good on their threats against shops stocking “Zionist produce”.
You’d think Swedes have some serious issues to ponder. As it turns out, this is what preoccupies the academic elite of the country: the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet reports on the latest round of project grants from the Swedish Research Council in an opinion piece entitled “Science or madness?” by Tanja Bergkvist, PhD in mathematics.
A translated excerpt:
The Swedish Research Council has granted over USD 100,000 to a three year project in musical sciences, “The trumpet as symbol of gender”, which intends to seek suspected gender-specific vocalities of the instrument. The gender insanity reaches new heights, writes Tanja Bergkvist.
The Swedish Science Council is the largest public finance institution for non-applied research at Swedish universities and science institutes. I recently criticized the influence of gender ideology at the preschool and primary school levels, but it doesn’t end there.
A small clique of experts in this county that has established a position of disproportional influence has a public agenda consisting of foisting the “gender perspective” on all public and private works in the country, including the sciences.
The Swedish Research Council employs a special dedicated “gender committee” tasked with “safeguarding that the gender perspective permeates all scientific research”.
Council’s grant data base reveals how far the gender insanity has gone
– – – – – – – – –
The Council has granted over 100,000 USD to a three-year project in musical sciences, which, among other things, seeks to “problematize the notions of male and female and examine in detail the concepts that are at work and create the trumpet as a marker of manliness.”
The project abstract speaks for itself; I will quote some passages:
“The overarching question is to determine what mechanism and social and cultural connections in time and space form, create, and are re-created through the trumpet as a gender symbol. In order to discern these, it becomes necessary to problematize the notions of male and female and to examine closely the notions that are at work and create the trumpet as a marker of manliness.
“Which norms are behind this? How are they expressed and what force do them seem to exert? The questions that guide me are: Which vocalities in the broad spectrum of trumpet vocalities are the norm and which vocalities are considered to be deviations and called female and male, respectively? What happens to the vocality when the trumpeter plays with a “female vocality”?
“To be able to uncover the construction of the image of the trumpet, I will also analyze trumpet debate in the academic tradition and in popular context. A similar study has never been done. The gender perspective has not been examined in trumpet research. In that way, the planned project will add an important new body of knowledge to the field.
“The gender science interested is satisfied in that the project will examine how gender is constructed in the musical context, as related to the instrument of the trumpet.”
Science or madness? You be the judge. I’m well beyond even amazement at this point. While I would like to make a quip about tooting your own horn — or trumpet, as it were — the instrumental simile that springs to mind immediately is fiddling while Rome burns.
What profoundly unserious people socialist are.
I guess they thought immigrants would be a sort of Ikea product.
Beyond the obvious insanity, which is blatant enough to be entertaining, there’s another aspect worth considering: the trivialization and radical dumbing down of social sciences, the urge to make them part of a political machine, is another attack on the basic values of western civilization. While less obvious the UN-supported free speech bans to pander to Islam, or separate criminal codes for Moslems, in the long term it will prove just as disastrous.
Evil in action.
CB,
abetted by the extreme left wing organization “Global Intifada” — made good on their threats against shops stocking “Zionist produce”.
Yes, this is what I expected them to say (“Zionist…”). But they didn’t say this. It’s reported all over Swedish media how the Global Intifada set the supermarkets afire for selling American products. Which I found remarkable — for a whole number of reasons — and which is the background for this post.
We have never had any campaign for a general boycott of American products before in Sweden. There have been general boycotts of South African and Israeli products before (look here Laine, I just made a moral equivalence between Israel and Apartheid South Africa!). There has been specific boycotts of e.g. Coca-Cola. But a campaign for a general boycott of American products is all new. At the same it is the most aggressive campaign that has ever been waged, using advanced fire bombs etc. And coupled with the fact that Obama was just elected, it becomes the strongest expression of categorical anti-Americanism ever seen in this country; and that in a country which hasn’t been shy about anti-Americanism before.
Is Gordon Brown planning military action against the British people?
Why otherwise are Army personnel being asked if they would be prepared to ‘open fire’ on UK citizens during civil disturbances?
Why otherwise are ‘special briefing sessions’ being held to ascertain whether or not members of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces would fire on their own nationals?
It may be quite usual for the Army to be placed on standby during periods of threatened unrest, but the thought of the streets of London being subject to the sorts of scenes last witnessed on the streets of Belfast is not remotely acceptable.
But Dr Richard North has received intelligence ‘from a confidential source’ that ‘the MoD was buying up unusually large quantities of tear gas and other riot equipment’.
http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/
It is all so predictable.
But what does that tell us about trombone players?
Von Brandenburg-Preußen.
Why otherwise are Army personnel being asked if they would be prepared to ‘open fire’ on UK citizens during civil disturbances?
We always WHERE. It is part of the recruitment procedure. I was asked in 1979, my Father in 1953, my Grandfather in 1939, my Great Grandfather in 1914.
As wher those of my family that served in the German army. And I was when I joined the Navy reserve here in 2000. (Only of course the formula here was “German citizens”.
Basic procedure for ALL armies.
Furor Teutonicus.
Furor
I wasn’t asked that when I enlisted here in the UK. Indeed, it was drummed into us during training that we were ultimately responsible for our own actions, and claiming obedience to orders would not hold water in a court of law. For such a question to be asked of British servicemen is truly shocking.
In the UK, the Nurembourg rules apply in full.
Sir Henry Morgan said…
In the UK, the Nurembourg rules apply in full.
The WHAT rules???
Never heard of them and my job WAS army law. (Military police).
Furor Teutonicus.
Ah as well Morgan, you will also be aware then, of the rule “you will obey orders first and question them later”?
(I am talking of the 80s here.)
Von Brandenburg-Preußen.