Spending any amount of time in the trenches of the ‘Culture Wars’ these days, even if it’s just running ammunition to those on the front lines doing the actual fighting, one gets to see the real gristle and bone of the insane daily dialogue, particularly from the radical Left. I decided to sign up to Twitter this past week, and spend some time monitoring a series of accounts belonging to those most vociferous in the battle for the hearts and minds of the millennial ‘woke’ patrol; it really is a melting pot of mental illness, hysterics and illogical shrieking. But even worse, the pot is being stirred by a very sophisticated media and “influencer” group whose purpose on the platform appears to be to ensure that the pot boils over as often as possible, scalding everyone in the kitchen.
This week alone I’ve learned from Twitter that Donald Trump has – apparently – incited the murder of journalists in Maryland; there is now such a thing as “Free Speech Extremism” in the UK; US Senator Maxine Waters exhorting supporters to harass, stalk and confront Trump administration members is an admirable position; Socialism is the coming thing in New York State with the success of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the recent Senate primary; the US is ranked in the Top 10 countries most dangerous for women; and with the naming of New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinta Ahern’s baby daughter, that the dreaded sin of “cultural appropriation” is perfectly acceptable, if done by the right sort of person for the correct political messaging. Hell, the Guardian Australia thinks she’s just the leader the Left needs now, and they’re probably right.
I’ve kept the list short for time, but I’m sure you can see the trend – the usual Fake News outlets, The Guardian, Newsweek, The Independent et al, preaching their particular blend of propaganda, social commentary and outright lies to their congregations, who sit enraptured, glorying in the sense of equal parts self-righteousness and outrage that the messaging conveys.
Don’t get me started on the little Guatemalan girl or Mexican kids in cages!
I’ve wrestled with trying to understand the mechanisms of this process for some time now, why the Left is so pathologically immune to reality. Yes, the echo chamber of social media is complicit in this regard, as are the aforementioned leftist media rags, but I’ve never been able to articulate clearly enough in my own mind what the disconnect is. It’s easy enough to point fingers at them and laugh at how outraged a group of people can be at reality, at how offensive the truth or a different point of view can seem to some; but how do I understand them?
Thankfully, this weekend the solution presented itself to me, and its both alarming in its implication and disarming in its simplicity.
Thanks to the latest podcast episode from inimitable British journalist, James Delingpole, in which he interviews Sven Hughes, a British army veteran and expert on the Taliban, it’s become obvious those on the Left are not insane or stupid, stubborn or misguided, or any combination of these – they are Radicalised with a capital “R”. Leftists exhibit pretty much the exact same patterns of behaviour that parents of at-risk children are warned to look out for in communities where radical Islam has taken hold.
The website educate.against.hate, a government entity linked to the UK Home Office and Department of Education notes the following signs a teenager is becoming radicalised:
• Becoming increasingly argumentative
• Unwilling to engage with children who are different
• Refusing to listen to different points of view
• Becoming abusive to children who are different
• Embracing conspiracy theories
• Feeling persecuted
• Changing friends and appearance
• Sympathetic to extremist ideologies and groups
When discussing the question of how teenagers become radicalised, the site goes on to note:
“Underpinning the radicalisation process is an extremist ideology that seems appealing and credible, often because it appears to make sense of the young person’s feelings of grievance or injustice.”
Does anybody not agree with me that this programme may as well be discussing SJW’s, university-aged adults and seemingly a large number of permanently-offended liberal progressives on social media with whom civil discourse is impossible?
Does the above list not accurately portray the gender-obsessed, feminazi, fake-news-spewing zealots who’ve started practising climate change, gender theory or Communism v2.0 as their preferred religion, and hurling destructive epithets at any heretics who dare to hold a dissenting view?
Are the masked, violent Antifa protestors that turn up at speaking engagements or conservative political events, chanting inane rhetoric about Nazi’s under the guise of some pro-refugee, pro-LGBT or pro-Muslim platform any less extremist than some 16-year-old loser plotting to bugger off to Arabistan to fight the kaffurs?
To paraphrase this article from medium.com, we are experiencing the reaction of a subset of the disaffected, torn between Western values which they do not feel a part of and their own inherited beliefs, vulnerable to ideologies that feed their insecurities, and engaged in social interactions online that lure them further and further in.
The same article asserts:
“… it cannot be denied that media outlets like sensationalised news [which] may lead to unbalanced coverage which in turn alienates group of people making them resentful”.
The solution may be an intervention of some sort, a community outreach of epic proportions, a This-Is-Your-Brain-On-Progressivism campaign of international cooperation – however this plays out, it’s time to engage some serious anti-radicalisation programmes, before thousands of these people self-immolate with outrage, taking the rest of us with them.
What do you think?
Photo by mark6mauno 