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Woke has also followed a trajectory similar to that of the phrase politically correct, which carried a similar meaning by the late 1980s and early 1990s: Politically correct, unsurprisingly, went from describing a way of seeing the world to describing the people who saw the world that way to describing the way other people felt about the people who saw the world that way. Some in the politically correct crowd on the left had a way of treating those outside it with a certain contempt. This led to the right refashioning politically correct as a term of derision, regularly indicated with the tart abbreviation P.C. The term faded over the years, and by 2015, when the presidential candidate Donald Trump was declaring that political correctness is just absolutely killing us as a country, woke already had greater currency.

Over the past few years, it has become all but impossible to use woke neutrally. It has been refashioned, like P.C., as an insult. One could say that this was simply because of contempt for leftist ideas, even ones relating to improving lives for Black people, but only at risk of oversimplification. Wokeness, as a kind of ideology, has irritated so many because of the tendency for some of its partisans to see those who dissent from their views as disingenuous, antidemocratic and even immoral. To be woke, past tense, is to be awake, present tense, to a way of perceiving societal matters. But its a short step from seeing matters this way to assuming that it is the only reasonable or moral way to see. That latter assumption has a way of rankling those who see things differently.

Now, those on the left, from Ocasio-Cortez on down, face a new iteration of an old dilemma: A neutral descriptor of their worldview saddled with a negative connotation.

Its easy to forget how antique, or at least vague, liberal feels lately. Much of the reason is that the term was tarnished by the right almost as much as woke has been. In an era spanning, lets say, Ronald Reagans presidency, Newt Gingrichs House speakership and Al Gores loss to George W. Bush, those who thought of themselves as liberals in commitment to nudging America toward ever broader embodiments of its ideals, especially those involving the dignity of all individuals, were tarred as unpatriotic sentimentalists dedicated to big government and with insufficient interest in family values.

Writing for The Times in 2009, Timothy Garton Ash hoped we might reclaim the classical meaning of the lowercase-L liberalism we learn about in college, espousing grand but abstract ideas such as liberty under law, limited and accountable government, markets, tolerance, some version of individualism and universalism and some notion of human equality, reason and progress. After all, who could possibly be against any of that?

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Opinion | Woke Went the Way of P.C. and Liberal - The New York Times

Former Liberal leader John Hewson has joined Labor veteran Barry Jones to endorse a social media-focused advocacy campaign targeting Scott Morrisons record on integrity matters and climate action in the lead-up to the federal election.

Hewson says the voluntary not-for-profit organisation, the Truth and Integrity project, has some crossover with Climate 200 an organisation supporting independent candidates focused on the climate crisis to challenge Liberal incumbents in their urban heartland and with the voices community groups modelled on the successful 2013 campaign of independent Cathy McGowan.

The integrity project, modelled in part on the Lincoln project in the United States, will not field political candidates, but will target its advocacy through content produced for social media. One of the people involved in the campaign is Australian film producer Bob Weis.

Hewson says the organisation intends to fundraise before next years federal election campaign drawing on the fairly significant base of people who will fund this sort of activity, focusing on the big issues that matter to our democracy.

I think one of the big issues right now that has been building for a lot of different reasons since the last election has been the whole issue of integrity and accountability in government, Hewson said.

The former Liberal leader said the Morrison government had failed to produce a credible model for a federal integrity commission over this parliamentary term. They are just playing games with that which is pretty offensive.

Hewson said the prime minister was now facing sustained questioning about whether he is telling the truth. He said pre-election contentions the prime minister had made this week about the Labor party increasing the cost of petrol or increasing energy prices lacked factual underpinning.

There is no evidence at all to support any of this stuff, Hewson said.

Climate 200, the group established by the climate activist Simon Holmes Court, has raised $3.6m over the past few months. With government MPs being targeted by activists in blue ribbon seats, the Liberal senator Andrew Bragg has already written to the Australian Electoral Commission asking for a probe of the voices movements that are organising independent campaigns.

Hewson said he and Jones had worked with Holmes Court and Ive done a fair bit of work supporting the voices movement.

The former Liberal leader said it was likely the next federal election could result in a hung parliament with independents holding the balance of power. Many independents contesting the election were running on platforms of climate action, integrity and accountability.

It all comes together. Thats the over-arching issue, he said.

You can see how the independents could hold the balance of power within that over-arching element of integrity and accountability, and the key elements of policies like climate and so on.

A loose alliance of independents could say to whoever is in government, unless you give us responsible legislation in these areas then we are not going to support you I think that will drive to better government.

In a statement posted on the groups website, Jones says he has joined Hewson as a patron of the Truth and Integrity project because democracy is under serious threat and both the Coalition and the federal ALP have no vision beyond the election of 2022.

Only an active citizenry can prevent sliding towards authoritarian or populist democracy with its endless appeals to the short term and self-interest, Jones says.

The rest is here:

Former Liberal leader to join forces with Labor veteran in bid to target Morrison ahead of election - The Guardian

The New South Wales Liberal executive will be pushed on Friday to speed up preselections in the state that could determine the outcome of the next federal election.

A number of Liberals are frustrated about the backroom tactics of a key ally of the prime minister the immigration minister, Alex Hawke. Party sources say Hawke has been deliberately delaying preselections in Morrisons home state in order to circumvent grassroots plebiscites to install candidates.

Guardian Australia understands a motion will go to the state executive on Friday calling for outstanding preselections to be expedited. With a federal election now only months away, the motion is said to have the support of both the hard right and moderate factions.

Liberals are worried the backroom brinkmanship is jeopardising the governments election preparations.

Only a handful of preselections have been completed. Exasperated Liberals point out the party currently has no candidate preselected for the electorate of Parramatta a targeted seat after the departure of the long-serving Labor MP Julie Owens.

Some sources say the Warringah conference is particularly agitated about the prolonged delays because there is no Liberal candidate preselected to take on Zali Steggall the independent who unseated Tony Abbott at the 2019 election.

Factional politics in the NSW Liberal party is notoriously brutal. This preselection season is the first time candidates will be selected through a controversial plebiscite model successfully pushed by Abbott.

Some of Hawkes colleagues contend he is using his position as Scott Morrisons organisational proxy to generate a crisis that can only be solved through central intervention a tactic that would maximise the position of his own soft right faction. The moderate and the hard-right conservative factions have formed a loose alliance in the state to counter the power of Hawkes centre-right faction.

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The Liberal party performed strongly in NSW during the 2019 federal election, but the government is under pressure from climate-focused independents rallying in heartland seats, and from political insurgencies on the right, with micro-parties emboldened by government restrictions imposed during the coronavirus pandemic.

The latest quarterly polling data from Guardian Essential suggests that Clive Palmers United Australia party has picked up steam since August. On primary votes, the UAP is currently a nose in front of Pauline Hansons One Nation, led in NSW by the high-profile former Labor politician Mark Latham.

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The UAP has gone from nothing to grabbing 5% of the primary vote since August. Voter interest is concentrated in regional parts of the country although the strongest support at the moment seems to be in NSW rather than Queensland.

Ahead of the final two parliamentary sitting weeks of the year, Morrison and the Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, have moved into faux campaign mode, with an election due in the first half of 2022.

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Liberals push to speed up NSW preselections amid frustration at tactics of key Scott Morrison ally - The Guardian

Chris Rufo is arguably the most important intellectual entrepreneur on the political right today. A senior fellow at the right-wing Manhattan Institute, he is nearly single-handedly responsible for the rise of critical race theory as a right-wing boogeyman an issue that came to dominate the national political conversation during the Virginia gubernatorial election.

On Tuesday, Rufo elaborated a bit more on the project he has in mind: Its time to clean house in America: remove the attorney general, lay siege to the universities, abolish the teachers unions, and overturn the school boards, he tweeted.

Confronted with unsavory parallels to militant fascist rhetoric against intellectuals, Rufo clarified that he was not calling for violence. For the Godwins Law aficionados: remove the attorney general through resignation or impeachment, lay siege to the universities through cutting federal subsidies, abolish the teachers unions through legislation, and overturn school boards through winning elections, he tweeted on Tuesday night.

Some of the clarifications are reassuring (theres nothing wrong with contesting elections). But others, in particular the comments on universities and teachers unions, were disturbing. Rufo is calling for the use of law as a weapon to weaken or even eliminate the social bases of his opponents political power. Its a vision of politics in which power is not shared democratically but wielded against ones enemies.

Hes been quite explicit about this. During an appearance at the National Conservatism Conference in early November, Rufo argued that reform around the edges is not enough to protect America from the progressive revolution. Instead, conservatives should embrace a defund the left political strategy in which they strangle new identity programs in red tape and accelerate the student loan Ponzi scheme [and] make universities partially responsible for defaults.

Rufos ruthlessness is best understood as the applied version of a political vision that has become widespread in influential right-wing intellectual circles. From demagogues like Tucker Carlson to highbrow thinkers like Notre Dames Patrick Deneen, the emerging right-wing line is that Americas core institutions have become captured by the left and must be seized if the country is to be saved.

This means going on offense when you have power not merely to accomplish conservative policy goals but to crush the left and stamp out its cultural viability.

The Postliberal Order is a new Substack publication by four right-wing Christian intellectuals: Deneen, Harvards Adrian Vermeule, University of Dallass Gladden Pappin, and Catholic Universitys Chad Pecknold. Its premise is that the modern liberal ordering of the world is exhausted meaning not just liberalism in the American political sense but the more capacious philosophical one.

Liberal ideals of individual rights, separation of church and state, and free markets have, in their view, created a society ever more solitary, ever more detached from ourselves, from our families, from our countries, and our God.

In an essay published Wednesday, Deneen essentially develops an intellectual framework for Rufo-ism the high-level justification for using the state to crush liberals and their institutions.

Deneen believes that conservatism is in a defensive crouch and has been so since its rise in the 20th century. This may seem odd to liberals and leftists, who have seen a string of conservative victories in the past several decades: the withering of the social safety net, the demolition of labor unions, the spread of strict state-level abortion restrictions, and even the restructuring of the electoral system in the GOPs favor. Yet in Deneens view, the Supreme Courts jurisprudence on social issues over that time abortion, same-sex marriage, and trans anti-discrimination protections left progressivism ascendant.

It began to dawn on many conservatives that, in spite of apparent electoral victories that have occurred regularly since the Reagan years, they have consistently lost, and lost overwhelmingly to progressive forces, he writes.

What is the reason for this failure? Deneen cites mainstream conservative adherence to seven liberal principles religious liberty, limited government, the inviolability of private institutions (e.g., corporations), academic freedom, constitutional originalism, free markets, and free speech as the root of its defects.

Liberalism has become consistently more aggressive in extending each of these features to their logical conclusion their own contradiction in the form of liberal totalitarianism, Deneen argues. Liberalism inevitably produces the evisceration of all institutions that were originally responsible for fostering human virtue: family, ennobling friendship, community, university, polity, church.

This so-called liberal totalitarianism Deneen is not specific on what current policies exactly resemble Soviet or Nazi repression cannot be defeated by the conservative establishment because it accepts basic liberal premises. In his view, mainstream conservatives play a key role in propping up the regime, acting as a controlled opposition for the powers behind the powers the oligarchs, the corporations, the power elite.

Deneen, a political theorist who likes to write at a high level of abstraction, does not lay out what policies follow from his diagnosis. But he does suggest that any progress requires abandoning core liberal commitments to ideals like free speech and religious liberty that any new conservatism should not see a respect for the diversity inherent in a large and complex society as a defining value.

What to liberalism seems a tolerant and decent regime, in the eyes of its predecessor tradition seems nothing more than cruel indifference, allowing clear vices not only to proliferate, but to enjoy implicit public approval, he writes, calling for a return to pre-modern Christian politics in the tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas.

So what does it mean to actually practice a politics thats no longer indifferent to clear vices?

Rufo provides an answer. There is a reason both Rufo and Deneen single out universities for special ire: For all their flaws, they are one of the key places where liberal cultural ideals flourish.

There are differences between the two: Rufo places more emphasis on left-wing racial politics while Deneen is more exercised by debates over gender and sexuality. But what they share is a vision of conservatism on offense, wielding the power of the state against its political opponents.

Rufo and Deneen are part of a bigger intellectual trend on the right one in which Americas core institutions are described as hopelessly corrupted by liberal forces.

Take Tucker Carlson. His new documentary, Patriot Purge, is a conspiratorial retelling of January 6 in which peaceful demonstrators were pushed to violence by FBI agents.

This isnt true, obviously. But think about what it would mean if it were: that the FBI, of all government agencies, was so deeply in league with Democrats and liberals that it had masterminded a totalitarian crackdown on Trump supporters. It would mean the entire edifice of the American state has become a tool for repressing conservatives.

That is the more or less explicit message of the documentary. If permanent Washington is willing to launch a second war on terror on its citizens, what else are they capable of? Carlson asks. Theyre telling you that crushing the civil rights of American citizens is necessary. ... We must spy on our political opponents, silence them, defame them, prevent them from having jobs, take away their bank accounts, throw them in solitary confinement, shoot them in the neck.

The Claremont Institute, a right-wing think tank in California, is dedicated to developing a more highbrow version of Carlsons worldview one in which American institutions and even citizens are the rights enemy. Claremont is undoubtedly the most radically pro-Trump of any major right-wing intellectual institution, its thinkers willing to defend both his presidency and his false claims of a stolen election.

Claremonts output in the past year or two has been astonishingly radical, all but openly calling for regime change and rebellion.

In a May Claremont podcast, Hillsdale College lecturer and former Trump administration official Michael Anton chatted with entrepreneur Curtis Yarvin a self-described monarchist who wants to appoint a Silicon Valley CEO king of America about their shared desire to topple what Anton terms the American regime, a government Yarvin characterizes in the podcast as a theocratic oligarchy controlled by a cadre of progressive priests.

During the episode, Yarvin muses about how an American strongman whom he alternatively calls Caesar and, more honestly, Trump could seize authoritarian control of the US government by turning the National Guard and FBI into his personal stormtroopers.

In a March article in the American Mind, Claremonts blog, writer Glenn Elmers declares that most people living in the United States today certainly more than half are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term. If Trump voters and conservatives do not band together and wage a sort of counter-revolution against these citizen-aliens, then the victory of progressive tyranny will be assured.

And an August essay in the Claremont Review of Books by scholar Angelo Codevilla describes a country whose government is clinging to an illusion of legitimacy after a half-century of Progressive rules abuse has demolished American society.

Views like these that repudiate Americas core institutions and ideals, up to and often including its democracy are becoming more and more mainstream on the right. They can be found at right-wing intellectual gatherings, like the National Conservatism conference. They can be found from one of the rights leading moneymen, venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who once argued that I no longer think that freedom and democracy are compatible. They even have champions on Capitol Hill, like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), a critic of woke capitalism who has argued that the idea that a person should be free to define your own values is a kind of heresy.

Its easy to dismiss this kind of illiberal language as purely rhetorical: radical posturing with few practical implications. But the past year of conservative politics, from the January 6 riot to the spread of voting restrictions and extreme gerrymandering to the rise of Rufos war on the education system, has shown that the rights illiberal impulses are actually shaping our reality.

Conservatism, in theory, is supposed to be an ideology of preservation. But the current right is increasingly being shaped by a reactionary impulse bent on the radical transformation if not the outright destruction of Americas leading institutions.

Read more here:

The intellectual rights war on Americas institutions - Vox

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Democratic state Rep. Michelle Beckley of Carrollton, who gained national attention for joining lawmakers who fled to Washington, D.C., to block a Republican election bill this summer, is running for lieutenant governor, expanding her partys primary to three contenders.

In her campaign announcement on Tuesday, Beckley said she was running because Republican incumbent Dan Patrick is implementing policies that hurt Texas business and make life harder for all Texans.

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Im running for Lieutenant Governor because politicians are putting ideology ahead of results that matter to Texans, she said. In the last legislative session alone, they worked to limit voters rights, put bounties on women, marginalize minorities, and make-up false boogeymen in our schools, and the health and wealth of Texans suffered. Im running to stop them.

Beckley joins a race that already includes political commentator Matthew Dowd and Houston accountant and auditor Mike Collier, who was the Democratic nominee for the position in 2018 and came within 5 percentage points of beating Patrick. She said she was recruited to run for the position but did not say by who.

Beckley said she joined the race to give Democratic voters another option and a candidate with more legislative experience.

Neither one of those candidates has won an election, she said. I won an election in a hard district and improved my margins.

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Collier has lost two statewide elections. First in 2014, when he ran for state comptroller against Republican Glenn Hegar and again in 2018 against Patrick. Dowd has not sought elected office before but was a political strategist for some of Texas politics biggest names, including Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Bob Bullock.

Beckley, the owner of a pet shop, entered Texas politics in 2018 when she flipped a traditionally Republican district in Denton County by ousting three-term incumbent Ron Simmons, who had authored the so-called transgender bathroom bill in 2017. Her victory was a surprise to many political observers, but Beckley said she plans to use the same shoe-leather approach to winning over voters in the lieutenant governors race.

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Beckley said Republicans will have a fundraising advantage over her, but she plans to raise enough money to get her message out and win over voters.

I was outspent 10-to-1 my first election. Nobody thought I was gonna win that either, she said. I've done it before. So I'm confident I could do it again. I wouldn't be running if I didn't think that.

Beckley said her top priorities as lieutenant governor would be expanding Medicaid, fixing shortcomings in the states power grid and fully funding public education. Those issues are in line with the priorities of the other candidates in the Democratic primary.

But Beckley, one of the most liberal members of the Texas House, is also known for her support for marijuana legalization, abortion rights and her call for more gun control after the 2019 mass shootings in El Paso and Midland-Odessa.

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Beckley said she is a candidate who can bring balance to the position of lieutenant governor. Issues like marijuana legalization and Medicaid expansion would benefit rural communities whose farmers could benefit from growing marijuana for business and whose struggling hospitals would be helped by a change in the health care system, she said.

But she does not back down from the positions shes taken on immigration, abortion rights and guns, saying shes portrayed as a liberal when she believes her actions are in step with the majority of Texas voters.

Our state has gone to the extreme and I am the values of the moderate, she said. In many other states I would not be considered liberal at all.

Beckley said Patrick is the extreme of the extremes and puts the interests of his donors ahead of those of average Texans.

He told people to sacrifice their grandparents for the pandemic, Beckley said, pointing to Patricks comments early in the pandemic that a failing economy was worse than the coronavirus.

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Since her election to the House, Beckley has been a thorn in the side of the GOP majority, often butting heads with the chambers leadership and vocally opposing their policies in debates and in the press. Former House Speaker Dennis Bonnen derided her as vile in a secret recording with a political operative.

Beckley said she doesnt plan to change her combative approach to politics during her statewide race.

It's a benefit, she said. The voters know I'm going there to fight for what they vote me in for.

Beckleys blunt talk has sometimes landed her in trouble with her own party. After she was elected to the House in 2018, some Democrats in Denton County accused her of making insensitive racial comments during the campaign trail, when she said the only Spanish she spoke was tacos and burritos.

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Beckley apologized for the comments but denied any racial bias. As her statewide race kicks off, Beckley said she will try to run on her record and not worry about past allegations.

I've learned that people will say anything they want to about you, she said. I do have a voting record that is the antithesis of what those unfounded conversations were.

Earlier this year, Beckley announced a run for Congressional District 24 in North Texas currently held by U.S. Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Irving. But Beckley suspended her campaign after lawmakers redrew the district to make it much more favorable to Van Duyne. At the same time, Republicans redrew her Texas House district to be more favorable for Republicans.

She considered several other offices, including municipal positions, before landing on running for lieutenant governor.

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They cant draw me out of Texas, she said.

Beckley welcomed former El Paso congressman Beto ORourkes entry into the governors race as a development that could help Democrats down-ballot.

It's great for the Democratic Party, she said. He has the infrastructure that we need. He is the strong voice that we need and he will help Texans. He will bring people to the polls.

Excerpt from:

Michelle Beckley, one of the Texas Houses most liberal members, joins Democratic primary for lieutenant governor - KPRC Click2Houston

The Liberal government is set to introduce a tougher version of its earlier bill to ban conversion therapy, which failed to pass before Parliament was dissolved for the election.

Nicholas Schiavo of the advocacy group No Conversion Canada said he has spoken with the federal government about the new bill, and that it will "leave less room for loopholes."

The coming proposed legislation would make it illegal to try to change someone's sexual orientation or gender identity through a discredited practice known as conversion therapy.

A previous bill, known as C-6, would have made it a criminal offence to force adults to undergo conversion therapy against their will.

The Liberals promised to reintroduce a version of the bill within the first 100 days of a new mandate, which began when cabinet ministers were sworn in last month.

A spokesperson for Justice Minister David Lametti said the government is committed to a "complete ban" on conversion therapy.

Schiavo said his organization expects the new version of the bill to be stronger than the last.

"Our expectation what we have heard is that upcoming legislation will introduce a complete ban on conversion practices without any loopholes for age, gender identity or faith," he said.

Bill C-6 was heavily amended and opposed by more than half the Conservative caucus the last time around. It was strongly supported by other parties.

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Liberals to introduce tougher version of bill to ban conversion therapy - CBC.ca

After getting off to an arguably slow start since winning re-election on Sept. 20, Justin Trudeau's Liberal government appears poised to go into hyperdrive with next week's resumption of Parliament.

The Liberals promised more than a dozen initiatives in their election platform including the introduction or reintroduction of at least eight bills within the first 100 days of a new mandate.

That 100-day clock started ticking on Oct. 26 as soon as the prime minister's new cabinet was sworn in.

The government will have lost almost 30 days by the time the new session of Parliament opens next Monday.

And it will have only 24 sitting days in which to get things done in the House of Commons before the clock runs out on Feb. 3 with the first two days essentially lost since they must be devoted to electing a Speaker and delivering a throne speech.

The Commons is scheduled to sit for only four weeks before breaking for the holiday season on Dec. 17, and MPs won't return until Jan. 31.

If the Liberals intend to keep their promises for the first 100 days and they insist they do that spells a crammed legislative agenda for the few weeks the House will be sitting before the new year.

"We have a very aggressive agenda to get to in the coming weeks and that's what we're focused on," government House leader Mark Holland said last week following the Liberals' first post-election caucus meeting.

In addition to the eight platform-promised bills to be introduced by Feb. 3, the government is also preparing legislation to deal with two pandemic-related issues that weren't specifically mentioned in the platform.

The first would implement last month's announcement on more targeted emergency aid benefits for individuals and sectors hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Holland indicated top priority will be given to passing that bill as quickly as possible.

Holland also signalled that priority will be put on passing a bill to impose criminal sanctions on anyone who blocks access to vaccine clinics, hospitals, testing centres and abortion clinics. It would also target anyone who intimidates or harasses health care workers, keeping a promise made by Trudeau as anti-vaccination protests ramped up during the campaign.

"Right now we want to make sure ... that we don't see what happened before where health care professionals who are trying to be on the frontlines of this battle are dealing with protesters and being menaced by that," said Holland.

Privately, government officials are hopeful that opposition parties will recognize the urgency to swiftly pass those two bills, as they've done in the past with other pandemic-related legislation.

Because they hold only a minority of seats in the Commons, the Liberals will need the support of at least one opposition party to pass legislation or to limit debate and force a vote on a bill.

In a minority House, an opposition party can drag out debate for weeks simply by putting up more speakers and running out the clock. It can also impede the government agenda by deploying procedural delaying tactics.

The Conservatives routinely did both in the last Parliament, which was also a Liberal minority, on matters unrelated to the pandemic.

Only towards the end of last spring's sitting did the NDP and Bloc Quebecois support the Liberals in imposing closure to cut off debate and force votes on a couple of priority bills to ban conversion therapy and regulate web giants but that came too late to get the bills through the Senate before the summer break and both died once Trudeau called an election in August.

Nevertheless, the government has signalled it's hoping this time that relatively quick progress can be made on at least two of the bills that the platform pledged to introduce within 100 days.

One would provide 10 days of paid sick leave for federally regulated workers, a measure triggered by the pandemic.

The other would be a reintroduced bill to ban the traumatizing practice of forcing a person to undergo "conversion therapy" aimed at altering their sexual orientation or gender identity. Although Conservatives spun out debate on the ban last time and more than half of them voted against it, it is strongly supported by all other parties.

Other promised bills could take a lot longer than 100 days to jump through all the legislative hoops. They include legislation to:

The platform also commits the government to a host of other non-legislative tasks within 100 days, including appointing a new federal housing advocate, holding a summit on restarting cultural industries, convening with provinces and territories to develop a national plan to legislate paid sick leave across the country, and launching a procurement process for development of a high frequency rail corridor between Toronto and Quebec City.

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Clock already ticking on Liberal promise to introduce host of bills in first 100 days - CBC.ca

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Indian standup comedian Vir Das recently read a monologue at The Kennedy Center theatre in Washington D.C., which at first appears to be a WhatsApp forward of Defence Colony groups, where he talked about binaries of good India and evil India. This short video has expectedly offended the chronically offended Right-wingers, who get a kick out of the very idea of being in the list of offended people.

I dont have any problem with the video,but there are certain questions that came to my mind when I watchedit. While discussing the evils of Indian society,whydid Vir Das notmention the word caste evenonce?I am not expecting much if I say I was at least hoping that he would say I come fromanIndia which is brutally divided onthelines of caste and Dalits are even killed forsportingamoustache orsittingcross-legged orriding a horse.

Caste should be the obvious issue to come to your mind when you discuss Indian society. Can you expect an American standup comedian or commentator deliver a long monologue about the problems with American culture and not mention racism, even once?

Indian Savarna liberals and our current intellectual discourse are plagued by a problem, which emanates from a deliberately devious decision the decision to not mention caste altogether. It explains everything that is wrong with the Indian society and Vir Das is the perfect archetype to study this.

Also read: How Instagram reels is a mirror to modern casteism in India

Every conversation in the Savarna liberal discourse mourns the end of epoch. Needless to say, it is clearly an end for only them. This forced funeral procession is turned into a mandatory event for all those who deemed themselves as liberals. Virs monologue is based on the same imagination.

Since2014 Indian liberals havedevelopeda hobby. It involves broodingover andimagining themselves as Guru Dutts who internally voice Jinhe naaz hai Hind par woh kahan hain.

The more befitting question to ask here is:Jis Hind pe naaz hai woh kahan hai.

Their demand seems to be this is not the India we knew and now want our pre-2014 India back. Sadly, their versions of an ideal India do not include the marginalised sections partaking in the glory of their assumed utopia. Never in history was there a time when marginalised sections saw a livable or normal time and any nostalgia for any glorious past.

Also read: Reactions to OBC medical quota are exposing Indians flawed merit argument all over again

Once upon a time, most of the Savarna liberals believed that the main villains in their story were corruption and reservation the two usual suspects that held their nation back from becoming a superpower. (They still do its just that they are vocal only about the latter now.)

Films likeRang De Basantiemerged,which led to the wholemovementof India against corruption. In a nation obsessed with films based onthereincarnation theme, the biggest appeal of the movement was Anna Hazare,who often appeared to many as a reincarnation ofM.K.Gandhi or the ageing version of Aamir Khans DJ fromRang De Basanti.

The whole premise was a purification ritual, which would make the utopia even more utopic. The corrupt, dirty politician would take a holy dip in the Lokpal and emerge pure and free from the evils of corruption.

Revisiting this memory only adds coherence to an observation of our current reality. Many have their heart in the right place,buttheir head clearlyisnt there. Activism then becomes an activity, standup-films-poetry seek revolution but only end up revolting the sensibilities (or the lackthereof) of the perpetually offendedRight-winger.

Towards the end of his seven-minute monologue, Vir Das sort of shifts the responsibility off himself onto the audience when he says he is turning the camera towards them. Reminiscent of MAGA campaigns that pit nostalgia as a place of utopia on which the future is based, he demands of the audience to believe in his India and to not let its memory die.

This is where the classic Savarna liberal trait to withdrawoneselffrom the problem surfaces. This is exactly how the Shashi Tharoors of India demand reparation from England (he also knows he is getting none) and thenreturn hometo do what the Internet terms assoft Sanghi behaviour. He flirts with those he deemsasfascist only to edge them and leave them wanting more while simultaneously showing how he is above them and has a purer idea of India which ultimately birthed the book,Why I Am A Hindu. Later on, the same debate in the liberal circle has shifted to the useless binaries of Hinduism vs Hindutva.

Vir Das standup makes the viewer sit down, which is exactly what the act intends to do. The Savarna ecosystem hails the act as revolutionary. This helps the audience to not directly confront the issues that could challenge their privilege. Ultimately, this makes the audience nostalgic for the memories of an abstract India, which only existed in their fantasy. Gandhis India. Nehrus India. An India which was as calm as the flowing water of Ganges near Rishikeshs luxury spa resort, but not as turbulent as the one that floods the countrys villages every year.

Also read: Can a Dalit wear Armani and Zara? Why most Indians would still say no

If satire is the means to mock the power and establishment, then Vir Das should fire shots at his own network and power of belonging to the highly privileged dominant caste in a caste-ridden society. It is relatively easier to build the image of resistance when stakes are low and you have no skin in the game. In fact, this whole projected image of a dissenting satirist who is challenging the status quo has additional power in the global arena in the anti-establishment satire market. The question should be asked if Vir is at all making fun of establishment. What is establishment and status quo in the Indian context?

In India all major institutions of power are the castles of oppressor caste hegemony and they form multiple arenas of establishment and power.

In his own monologue, Vir Das mentions that he comes from an India which is proud of vegetarianism. In India, 30 per cent of the countrys population can afford or claim to be pure vegetarian and majority of it would belong to dominant caste groups. This itself shows which India Vir represents.

The whole idea about vegetarianism is, in fact, deeply associated with the purity of caste, which ultimately is a Brahminical idea in Indian context. The recent order passed by the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation against banning non-vegetarian stalls on the streets of the city isnt because Narendra Modi felt adventurous in his dislike for chicken tandoori but because a Brahminical idea of morality runs deeper in the veins of this society. This Brahminical establishment and dominant caste hegemony will continue to rule India with or without the BJP in power.

Unless one challenges this particular idea of India, one cannot be termed as anti-establishment, radical or even hard-hitting comic. In fact, most of the hard-hitting satire in India should be renamed as hardly hitting anywhere.

Anurag is a multimedia artist and host of Anurag Minus Verma Podcast. He tweets @confusedvichar. Views are personal.

(Edited by Prashant)

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The India that Vir Das and liberals want and the one they wont talk about - ThePrint

Nov 20th 2021

BORIS JOHNSON is under siege from all directions. Stories of Tory sleaze multiply. Constituencies in the north of England are furious about plans to scale back high-speed rail. Yet the prime minister nevertheless found time on November 15th to don white tie and tails and address the annual Lord Mayors banquet at the Guildhall in London. Packed with people far more powerful than mere politicians, it had all the hallmarks of an establishment affair. The proceedings were incomprehensible to outsiders; dullness and high theatre intermingled. Mr Johnson started by name-checking dignitaries: aldermen, sheriffs and the chief commoner (whose title was once rendered in Chinese as head peasant) and progressed to quantum computing and AstraZeneca vaccines.

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Henry Fairlie, who coined the term establishment in 1955, argued that the exercise of power in Britaincannot be understood unless it is recognised that it is exercised socially. Surveying the stately procession of sea-bass and grass-fed beef on Monday night (Monday night!) he would have been certain that nothing had changed. Yet the self-satisfied surface concealed a split. For Britains establishment is now not unitary, but divideda pair of rival power centres, hostile and mutually uncomprehending.

One, centred on the Conservative Party, includes such vestiges of the old establishment as the armed forces and great public schools. It extends to public-relations firms, government contractors and right-wing newspapers. The City, once happy with New Labour, was pushed towards the Conservatives by Labours former far-left leader, Jeremy Corbyn. This establishments heartlands are the provinces, where small-business owners complain about their taxes and swap stories of political correctness gone mad.

The other power centre is progressive-liberal. It is less focused on a political party (though it loved New Labour) than on cultural institutions: the civil service, universities, publishing houses, the BBC, the Observer and Guardian newspapers, the arts bureaucracy and, increasingly, the legal profession. It is so metropolitan that the division between the two echoes the split between the Court and Country factions of the 17th and 18th centuries.

The Tory establishment believes in the primacy of the nation state; the liberal establishment in cosmopolitanism. This divide was both reflected in and reinforced by the struggle over Brexit. The Tory establishment believes in the primacy of the queen-in-parliament (much of Mr Johnsons legislative agenda is motivated by a desire to undo New Labours constitutional fiddling); the liberal establishment in dividing power between lots of institutions. The Tory establishment sees British history as a treasure-house of achievements (David Cameron, Mr Johnsons predecessor-but-one, said that Henrietta Marshalls Our Island Story, published in 1905, was his favourite book as a child, and he often referred to it when calling for reforms of the history syllabus.) The liberal establishment believes that the arc of history bends towards justice, with justice defined as diversity, equity and inclusion.

The Tory establishments most irritating tendency is to justify its actions as the will of the peopleas if the leading light of Tory philosophy was Jean-Jacques Rousseau rather than Edmund Burke. The liberal establishment, meanwhile, thinks it knows what is good for people. The Tories see the man in the pub as a fount of wisdom; liberals increasingly think he is a bigot.

Having two establishments is not all bad. Whichever is out of power can act as a counterweight to the government, helping to make up for Britains lack of constitutional checks and balances. Arguably, Britain is now politically healthier than during the early days of New Labour, when both government and cultural institutions sang from the same hymn-sheet.

But there are many disadvantages, among them institutionalised irresponsibility. For both elites refuse to acknowledge that that is what they are, seeing themselves rather as heroic rebels. Mr Johnson (educated at Eton and Balliol) thinks of himself as leader of an army of revolutionaries against what he calls the blobthat is, civil servants and anyone else who seeks to frustrate his will. Panjandrums of the liberal elite, such as heads of Oxford colleges, an astonishing number of them cast-offs from the civil service and BBC rather than distinguished scholars, regard themselves as freedom-fighters against a dictatorial government.

Another disadvantage is the triumph of extremism. You cant get into the Tory establishment without endorsing Brexit, or the liberal establishment without lauding diversity. Thus the Tories have lost moderates such as Rory Stewart, a former diplomat and candidate for the party leadership. The liberals have exiled heterodox thinkers such as Kathleen Stock, a philosopher who questions liberal pieties about trans identities, and who recently left Sussex University after harassment by students and colleagues.

Yet another drawback is a weird combination of blame-shifting and tail-pulling. The government is adept at pinning crises on civil servantshence the unusually high number of permanent secretaries to resign since the election of 2019. The liberal establishment attributes everything bad to Tory cuts. The Tory establishment delights in foisting hard-core Brexiteers on the liberal establishmenthence the attempt to install Paul Dacre, former editor of the Daily Mail, as chair of Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator. The liberal establishment is never happier than when casting the other side as woman-hating racists, even though the Conservative Party has produced two female prime ministers and Labour none, and the cabinet is filled with members of ethnic minorities.

The great virtue of Fairlies old establishment was that, for all its pompousness, it brought an adult seriousness to British life. Its twin successors, by contrast, are addicted to juvenile squabbling. That would be bad at the best of times. When the country faces such severe problems, it may prove catastrophic.

For more coverage of matters relating to Brexit, visit our Brexit hub

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline "Who runs the country?"

Excerpt from:

Britain's establishment has split into two, each convinced it is the underdog - The Economist

The Liberal Party has selected its new team for the upcoming Georges River Council elections which will be held on Saturday, December 4.

The Liberal team for Georges River Council are:

Sam Elmir, Blakehurst Ward; Nick Smerdely, Mortdale Ward; Nancy Liu, Hurstville Ward;

Lou Konjarski, Peakhurst Ward, Sam Stratikopoulos, Kogarah Bay Ward.

The Liberal's Plan to improve the quality of life within the local government area includes:

"We need a strong council for our local area," Liberal team leader, Sam Elmir said.

"This election more than ever, we need a team on Council who will stand up for the needs of local residents and their families both now and into the future," he said.

"Our clear plan for the local community is keeping rates low, fighting against overdevelopment, improving our public spaces, protecting our natural environment and fixing our traffic congestion.

"Our team is committed and experienced in delivering on the needs of the St George region and will provide the innovative and forward thinking ideas that will set our community up for the future.

"Our Liberal team will continue to fight against overdevelopment and ensure that the St George area remains the best place to live, work, run a business and raise a family.

"Protecting our local area from inappropriate overdevelopment, improving critical Council services and ensuring strong financial management of Council's books will always be our top priorities," Mr Elmir said.

"With restrictions continuing to ease and our economy already on the path to recovery, we need a local council that is committed to growing jobs, investment and employment opportunities within the community.

"We do not want Councillors who have lost touch with the community on the important issues that matter most to families."

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Meet the Liberal team running for Georges River Council - St George and Sutherland Shire Leader