Monthly Archives: April 2021

Rarely a week passes without a rightwing commentator warning about the rise of cancel culture or decrying the woke agenda. Wokeness has been described as a threat to democracy, freedom of speech and in the words of the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden part of a wider effort to do Britain down. Boris Johnsons government, cheered on by sections of the British press, is waging a war on woke to deal with this alleged crisis, targeting leftwing activists, anti-racists, academics and trans rights advocates.

Some have suggested ministers are stoking this culture war to distract voters from their failures in government. But this explanation underestimates the ideological reasons behind the governments strategy, which is better understood as an attempt to shift the Overton window to the right while framing the rights of minorities as a fringe concern. The Conservatives seek a post-Brexit Britain bolstered by (among other things) an increasingly nativist and divisive populism, and a national pride in the achievements of the British empire, untrammelled by leftwing critics.

There is a long history in Britain of the right whipping up a moral panic about leftwing activists working within state institutions to promote minority issues that most ordinary people supposedly oppose. In the 1980s, the British media portrayed a coalition of Marxists, anti-racists, feminists and gay rights activists as the loony left, a trope that was embraced by editors, journalists and politicians alike, particularly during the 1987 general election.

Under Margaret Thatcher, the Conservatives endorsed a neoliberal free-market economy, but their liberalism did not extend beyond this. The governments regressive approach to issues of race, gender and sexuality was famously characterised as one of Victorian values. For the British right in the 1980s, a war on the loony left was part of a broader ideological battle to reverse the social changes of the 1960s, when progress had been made on issues such as legalising homosexuality and abortion, and the increased awareness the 1968 generation showed towards the rights of women, gay people and Black and Asian people.

After Thatchers electoral victory in 1979, the influence that the British left had previously enjoyed withered. Meanwhile, the face of leftwing politics was changing. In the 1970s and 80s, an array of social movements emerged, including the Anti-Nazi League in response to the National Front, the womens liberation movement and the growing gay rights movement. These pluralist movements indicated that the left needed to take issues such as race, gender and sexuality seriously.

While many leftwing MPs resigned themselves to fighting defensive battles at the national level, local government became a fertile site of resistance to Thatcherism. Councils across London, alongside the Greater London council (GLC) under Ken Livingstone, Sheffield city council and Liverpool city council became places to enact socialist politics in a country governed by majority Tory rule. The GLC funded anti-racist, feminist and pro-LGBT initiatives, while many local councils made strident efforts to denounce apartheid in South Africa and announced nuclear-free zones. In London, Ken Livingstone infamously organised talks with Sinn Fin representatives through the GLC.

Unsurprisingly, this provoked anger among sections of the British press. As James Curran, Ivor Gaber and Julian Petley show in their book, Culture Wars: The Media and the British Left, the tabloids started using the term loony left in the mid-1980s to portray the rise of a crackpot left more concerned with minorities than with class. Apocryphal stories of what would come to be known in the 1990s as political correctness gone mad, such as the alleged banning of the word manhole or the censoring of the nursery rhyme Baa Baa Black Sheep by Hackney council, made tabloid headlines supposedly exposing the lefts fixation with fringe and minority issues.

Stories of the loony left helped to justify the ultimate abolition of the GLC. The Conservatives made this a promise in their 1983 election manifesto, and alongside the defeat of the miners strike in 1985, the dissolution of the GLC in 1986 can be viewed as a Thatcherite victory over socialist politics. But stories of local authorities engaging with these issues still abounded, leading to further action by the Thatcher government. One of the most significant moves came in 1988, when the Conservatives introduced section 28 of the Local Government Act, which sought to prohibit the promotion of homosexuality by local authorities. It wasnt until 2003 that the Blair government repealed it.

Of course, criticisms of the loony left and the implicit accusation that too much attention was being devoted to the rights of minorities werent exclusively the preserve of Conservatives. Many people in the Labour party also attacked sections of the left that supported these issues. In 1983, the gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell ran as the Labour candidate in the Bermondsey byelection. He was criticised by Labour party insiders, and said that the party leadership pressured him to keep quiet about his private life. Under Neil Kinnock, Labour still viewed gay rights as a minority issue that might not appeal to voters, while Kinnock and Roy Hattersley, Labours former deputy leader, opposed the partys Black Sections, the movement established in 1983 to demand greater representation for African Caribbean and Asian people.

There are clear parallels between criticisms of the loony left in the 1980s and the labelling of movements such as Black Lives Matter and Extinction Rebellion as woke in the present day. In both eras, Conservative politicians and sections of the British press have demonised leftwing movements and portrayed them as worrisome forces attempting to infiltrate national institutions. While the right sought to rid local authorities of the loony left in the 1980s, theyre now raising the alarm over the alleged creep of wokeness in cultural institutions such as the BBC and the National Trust.

As the political theorist Lea Ypi wrote last year, this culture war is stoking fears that Britain is threatened by leftwing identity politics that are harmful to a particular British way of life. Just as stories about the loony left gave credence to Thatchers war on local government in the second half of the 1980s, similar fear of wokeness and charges of leftwing bias or virtue signalling have legitimised the pressure that ministers have placed upon institutions such as the BBC. While some of their targets may have changed, the scare tactics of the right have not.

Read more from the original source:

The Conservatives have been waging their war on woke for decades - The Guardian

A new order from President Joe Biden banning federal immigration agencies from using terms such as illegal alien is a step in the right direction, say some immigration activists in the Upper Valley.

But others argue that an order dictating language does not do enough to promote the rights of undocumented people.

Lawyers and activists spoke out this week following the order, which Bidens office sent in a memo to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol Monday. The order bans the federal agencies from using the terms alien, illegal alien and assimilation.

Instead, they should use terms like Noncitizen or migrant, undocumented, and integration according to the WashingtonPost, which first reported on the memo.

The order does not have any bearing on the language used in state or federal law. U.S. Code Title 8, which covers immigration laws, still refers to undocumented people as aliens.

Erin Jacobsen, an immigration lawyer and professor at Vermont Law School, called Bidens order a good first step. She said the order applies only to ICE and CBP because those are the only two agencies that Biden can have say over without going through Congress.

I think its welcome and I think it sends an important message that the Biden administration is trying to walk back a terminology and sense of vitriol that the Trump administration used, Jacobsen said.

She explained that during the Trump presidency, and in the 2016 election, Trump frequently used words like alien and illegal as well as calling some immigrants drug dealers, which Jacobsen calls a language of hate and fear. She also said using the word alien in the context of immigration makes people appear to be not human.

However, while shes supportive of Bidens order, Jacobsen said more needs to be done to further rights for asylum seekers and other undocumented people. That includes addressing the immigration court system, which Jacobsen calls broken, largely because of how long it currently takes asylum seekers to have their cases heard. She also wants the administration to work toward providing legal status to students and other residents who have long lived in the U.S. without documentation.

This is a really welcome first step, but I think were all kind of waiting to see what happens next, Jacobsen said.

Thats the case for Ethan Lawrence, a Windsor resident who grew up in the U.S., but whose father traveled to the States from his home country of El Salvador.

Terms like alien and illegal, have played a huge part in who we see as being human and whose lived experience is valuable, Lawrence said. However, he also criticized the order, calling it political and performative.

In and of itself its a positive step but its a little premature for self-congratulations, Lawrence said.

He explained that he would prefer to see the federal government ensure that all due process and the same civil liberties are shown to undocumented people as they are to U.S. citizens, and he would prefer to see Bidens administration fulfill campaign promises regarding immigration. Lawrence also said he was disappointed in another recent order Biden signed, keeping the cap on U.S. refugee admissions at 15,000 people a historic low that was set by Trump.

I dont really care what your language is, if youre going to treat people in a dehumanizing fashion, Lawrence said. It doesnt matter whether you call them illegals or not. It matters whether you put them in camps.

Other activists, like Windsor resident Kira Kelley, the chair of the Vermont National Lawyers Guild, shared Lawrences criticism. Kelley said the order merely addresses a symptom of a huge, underlying problem, without addressing the cause.

Theres a category of people who are treated as other because they were not born in this country, Kelley said.

She said while terms like illegal alien are racist, changing the language does not fix the larger issues regarding how the country treats immigrants and undocumented people. The issues she would like to see addressed are unjust immigration laws and a poorly regulated immigration court, Kelley said.

Some Republicans have objected to Bidens move. The Post noted that U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., tweeted: We use the term illegal alien because theyre here illegally. This kind of weakness and obsession with political correctness is why were having a crisis on the border in the first place.

In January, Biden brought a bill before Congress that would provide a path to citizenship for more undocumented immigrants living in the U.S.

Excerpt from:

As Biden tweaks language around immigration, experts call for more substantive reform - Concord Monitor

JTA Is anti-Semitism more of a problem on the left or the right?

Should Jews concentrate their energy on combating the far right? Or should they focus on fighting anti-Israel bias on campus? How do questions of race relations in the United States play into anti-Jewish bigotry?

As anti-Semitism has risen in the United States in recent years, these questions have preoccupied and divided Jewish leaders, activists and journalists, along with ordinary American Jews struggling to understand a country that may feel less safe than it once was.

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Now a survey of American adults, published this week, hopes to answer those questions with data. And the results, according to the two academics who authored it, are clear: Conservatives are more likely to hold anti-Semitic attitudes than liberals, with young conservatives being the most likely to believe stereotypes about Jews.

The survey of more than 3,000 American adults, most of them aged 30 and under, also found that Black and Latino respondents were more likely than white respondents to hold anti-Semitic attitudes. And it found that young people on the far left were more likely to hold Jews responsible for Israels actions than those in the center or right.

While we find evidence consistent with theories of both left-wing and right-wing anti-Semitism, the results convey an unambiguous message that anti-Semitic attitudes are far more prevalent on the right, the survey said. In addition, our evidence suggests significantly higher rates of anti-Semitic attitudes among racial minorities relative to whites across the ideological spectrum.

Eitan Hersh (Courtesy)

Conducted in the fall of 2020 by YouGov, the survey includes 2,500 young adult respondents, aged 18 to 30, and 759 older respondents over 30. It was commissioned by Tufts University political science professor Eitan Hersh and Laura Royden, a doctoral student in government at Harvard University. The margin of error among the young adults was 2%, and 4% for the older respondents.

Respondents on the right, both young and old, were more likely than those on the left to believe longstanding stereotypes about Jews, like saying that Jews have too much power, Jewish businesses should be boycotted in protest of Israels actions or American Jews are more loyal to Israel than the United States.

The respondents self-identified on a scale with seven levels ranging from very liberal to very conservative.

Laura Royden (via Twitter)

Less than 5% of very liberal young adults believe Jews have too much power, versus approximately 35% of very conservative young adults. Similarly, around 9% of very liberal young adults said Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the US, as opposed to about 36% of very conservative young adults. In general, the more conservative one was, the more likely they were to hold an anti-Semitic belief.

Younger conservatives were also more likely than older conservatives to believe anti-Semitic stereotypes. Younger conservatives were twice as likely to say Jews have too much power and to support boycotting Jewish-owned businesses in protest of Israel. They are also more likely to say American Jews are more loyal to Israel.

Hersh believes anti-Semitic attitudes among younger conservatives reflect their opposition to notions of political correctness.

It seems like they have reactionary attitudes toward political correctness in a lot of dimensions, and that manifests here in a very common willingness to say Jews have too much power or theyre disloyal, he said. I think we were a little surprised at how evident those attitudes are in our survey.

Vandals spray-painted You will die and various anti-Semitic slogans on a high school in Virginia on May 12, 2019. (WTVR screen capture)

In asking respondents whether they believe in anti-Semitic stereotypes, the survey employed a similar measuring stick as the Anti-Defamation League has used in surveys over the past six decades. An ADL survey from 2019 found that more than 60% of Americans believed at last one of 11 anti-Semitic stereotypes and that 11% believed a majority of them.

The finding that anti-Semitism is more prevalent on the right also jibes with a recent survey by the American Jewish Committee that measured Jewish and general American perceptions of anti-Semitism. That survey, taken last year, found that most Jews and Americans believe that the Republican Party holds anti-Semitic views, while 42% of Americans overall and 37% of Jews felt the Democratic Party held anti-Semitic views.

The survey also found that across the political spectrum, Black and Latino respondents were more likely to believe anti-Semitic stereotypes than white respondents. About 15% of self-identified white liberals believed in one of the three stereotypes included in the survey, compared to 26% of Latino liberals and 42% of Black liberals. Likewise, about 30% of white conservatives believed one of the stereotypes, compared to more than 50% of Black or Latino conservatives.

In general we think of young people as liberal, we think of minorities as liberal, Hersh said. The reasons why we see anti-Semitism among Blacks and Latinos are quite different from why we might see it among liberals.

Bruce Haynes (Courtesy)

Class differences help explain anti-Semitism among Black Americans, said Bruce Haynes, a sociologist and author of The Soul of Judaism: Jews of African Descent in America. African-Americans, he said, may see Jews primarily as white people who hold privilege in society, and may seize on anti-Semitic stereotypes as a way to scapegoat them.

He added that in his view, bigotry emanating from the Donald Trump administration helped normalize anti-Semitism in the public sphere even among people who did not support Trump.

Were talking about a society thats heavily segregated by race and class, and we wonder why groups turn to ethnic stereotypes and anti-Semitism to express whats happening to them, said Haynes, a professor at the University of California, Davis, adding that dynamic takes place precisely when those anti-Semitic explanations have been licensed in our public culture in a tremendous way by our legitimate government.

There was one question on which both very liberal and very conservative people were more willing than their more moderate peers to advocate what Hersh called an anti-Jewish double standard. More than 40% of very liberal and very conservative young people said Jews need to denounce Israels discrimination against non-Jews in order to participate in social justice activism. Only 20% of moderates agreed.

The survey asked the same question regarding whether Muslims need to denounce Muslim countries discrimination. Very liberal young people were more likely to demand that Jews denounce Israel, while very conservative young people were more likely to demand that Muslims denounce Muslim countries.

The elite schools where Israel debates get a lot of media coverage have very liberal student bodies. And, according to the survey, very liberal young people are disproportionately willing to implicate Jews when criticizing Israel

That statistic, Hersh said, goes a long way to explaining why people who pay attention to college campuses might think theres a lot of anti-Semitism on the left. The elite schools where Israel debates get a lot of media coverage, he said, have very liberal student bodies. And, according to the survey, very liberal young people are disproportionately willing to implicate Jews when criticizing Israel.

From the perspective of college students on a campus like mine, they dont see the full ideological range. Theyre living in that very liberal world, he said. We are seeing in our data evidence of that kind of double standard in that population.

But Hersh said that the survey data as a whole shows that left-wing anti-Semitism is much less prevalent overall than anti-Semitism on the right.

Regarding left-wing anti-Semitism, he said, I think what were showing is that kind of thing exists, but in the broader context thats not the main thing going on.

See the rest here:

The stats of US anti-Semitism: A new survey has some clear and dismal data - The Times of Israel

Some of the best hymns I have ever heard and learned were written well before my time. One of these songs is Leaning on the Everlasting Arms written by Elisha A. Hoffman in 1887. It is a song about trusting in Jesus. It is a song about how each and every day of our life would be better if we would open our hearts and eyes to the only one that can lead us through the turmoil this world gives us.

If we read or listen to the news that is provided for us today we find that the world is in chaotic conditions because we have taken our eyes off of Jesus. We see non-believers wanting attention from all countries and they have infiltrated our country in a stronger way than ever before. Our government leaders and judges have given into political correctness and have allowed non-Christian entities to get a strong hold on our livelihood. The Christians have set back and watched Satan get a stronger hold on the earth than he has ever had. We, as Christians, understand the Lord is in charge; however we are to be His messengers but we have a trust that is wavering toward worldly conditions.

Hoffman, who was a Presbyterian minister and writer of over 2000 hymns, knew what would happen to us if we took our eyes off of the Lord Jesus and try to go our own way. Read some of the verses that he put in his song and understand what trusting in Jesus will do for you.

What a fellowship, what a joy divine, leaning on the everlasting arms; what a blessedness, what a peace is mine, leaning on the everlasting arms.

Oh, how sweet to walk in this pilgrim way, leaning on the everlasting arms; oh, how bright the path grows from day to day, leaning on the everlasting arms.

What have I to dread, what have I to fear, leaning on the everlasting arms? I have blessed peace with my Lord so near, leaning on the everlasting arms.

The refrain: Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms; leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms.

Even though many claim to be Christians I wonder how many would say they are God-fearing Christians. Many of our churches have changed and the messages we are hearing from the pulpits are being watered down. Gods Holy Word, the Bible, does not water down its message and has remained constant since the beginning. Why have we as Gods people allowed our Christianity to be weakened by others when we know who and what the truth is?

Remember what Jesus tells us in John 14:6; I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. Jesus stretches out His everlasting arms to us and all we have to do is trust in Him. On occasions our journey through life may be rocky but our eternal home is with Jesus where there will be no more pain or sorrow.

Prayer

Thank you Jesus for your promise of eternal life. Thank you for allowing me to come to you in any circumstances and you will guide me through all of them. Amen.

Suggested Readings

Sunday Psalm 46:1-3

Monday John 14:1-6

Tuesday Deuteronomy 33:26-29

Wednesday Mark 10:13-16

Thursday Isaiah 46:3-11

Friday Romans 8:31-39

Saturday Jeremiah 29:11-14

Read more:

FAITH: Leaning on the everlasting arms of Jesus - Kosciusko Star Herald