Friday, July 10, 2020

The Progressive Left Is Becoming Blatantly Racist


By and large, conservatives have taken a nuanced approach to the progressive attempt to redefine racism. This new definition crafted over the past few decades, mainly in the academy, states that racism is not a question of animosity or feelings of superiority towards a racial group but rather a matter of privilege and systems. Under this rubric racism is not about individual actions, but rather support for “systems of oppression.”

But there is a key difference in the way that the left and the right have engaged in this dialogue. Progressives have no trouble at all saying that people who reject their newspeak version of racism are in fact racist. Up until now conservatives have largely resisted reaching the logical conclusion of their definition of racism, which is essentially discrimination based on skin color. That has to change now. The blatant racial bigotry of the left must be called out. It is no longer an esoteric academic debate; it is a crisis that threatens to tear the country apart.

Take this tweet from Farnaz Fassihi, a journalist at the New York Times, in reaction to a letter calling for an end to cancel culture.



Allow me to be blunt. This tweet is patently, obviously and indisputably racist. The content of the letter is irrelevant to Fassihi. All she needs to know is the color of the skin of the people who spearheaded it to know that she not only disagrees with it, but must call it out. Refusing to engage with someone’s ideas because of their skin color is racist. All the post-modern and critical race theory mumbo jumbo in the world cannot change that basic fact.

The only way one could look approvingly at this tweet that boldly states that Fassihi chooses to ignore ideas from people based on their skin color is if one believes, as many progressives do, that racism against white people is impossible. This proposition is an absolute absurdity. Under this premise it is not racist to say, “I hate all white people and wish them harm.” If that statement isn’t racist then what it is exactly?

This pernicious excusing of blatant racism is no longer simply a controversial trend in academia. Our children, as young as grade school, are being taught to judge others and themselves based on skin color. That is nothing short of an abomination. Anybody who believes in equality and justice must completely reject this system that values or devalues individuals on the basis of race. Its frankly incredible and alarming that we even have to discuss that.

Someone who will look you in the eye and say “I am not a racist, I just value your opinion less because of your skin color,” is not only engaged in enormous self-deception. They are engaged in a project to exchange the very concept of “meaning” for power. The reason that George Orwell’s newspeak maxims like “war is peace” are paradoxes of ideas opposed to each other is that all words must be redefined so that it is only possible to say what the Party accepts.

I have spent several years attempting to engage the left in a conversation about racism and how we understand, tackle and defeat it. I have come to the conclusion that most of them have absolutely no interest in having this conversation and are much more comfortable just pointing fingers and screaming racism to gain power.

So let me make my position perfectly clear. If you value someone or their ideas more or less because of their skin color you are a racist. That is what the word means. That is what the word has always meant. If we reach the point where words have no meaning as Orwell predicted, then we cannot be free, freedom is predicated upon a mutual understanding of reality. Today’s left is destroying that understanding and it needs to be challenged. It needs to be challenged aggressively and it needs to be challenged now.