Iconoclast: The Racism of the ‘Anti-Racists’
In recent weeks, Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility” has become “Amazon’s No. 1 seller” — despite, blogger Matt Taibbi writes, being “tricked-up pseudo-intellectual horses - - t” that peddles “Hitlerian race theory.” For DiAngelo, if you’re white, you have “no identity apart from your participation in white supremacy,” and you just have to “strive to be less white.” All her thinking comes down to “a series of binary choices,” impelling her to condemn color-blindness as an aspiration and reject Martin Luther King’s “ ‘dream’ of racial harmony.” She and her book are representative of the “dingbat racialist cult” that our elites are now embracing, in which we “fetishize the unbridgeable nature” of racial differences. It’s almost as if “corporate America,” which promotes this stuff, wants to “keep people divided.”
Libertarian: Lessons From the Stalin Famine
“Mr. Jones” (now on Amazon Prime) shows reporters covering up Stalin’s famine and justifying it as for a “greater” cause, notes Reason’s Glenn Garvin, and it “could be a right-this-minute conversation between American journalists.” In portraying correspondents in 1930s Moscow as “Stalinist whores,” the film is “true in its essentials,” pitting reporter Gareth Jones against The New York Times’ Walter Duranty, “fresh off a Pulitzer” for his “fawning” Stalin coverage: “There comes a time in every man’s life when he must choose a cause greater than himself,” Duranty lectures. Despite the damage Duranty’s apologia caused, the Times opposed revoking his Pulitzer — though the paper now favors removing Confederate statues honoring men who embody the Confederacy’s “violent bigotry.” Apparently, “honoring lies” told to support Stalin’s violence is “another matter.”
Culture desk: Make Masks Accessories
Mask-wearing mandates “were bound to spark resistance,” remarks Bloomberg Opinion’s Virginia Postrel. “Choosing your own clothes is a sign of autonomy and power,” after all. But mandates and shaming won’t work. People “wear clothes to meet social expectations, express who they are and add beauty, comfort and style to their everyday lives. To encourage mask-wearing, we need to tap into those instincts.” White House coronavirus adviser “Anthony Fauci had the right idea when he wore a Washington Nationals mask at a congressional hearing last week. He demonstrated that masks don’t have to be boring.” You can even “buy masks expressing your hatred of masks.” We will get more people wearing them if we accept “people cherish the freedom to choose what to wear and that masks are clothes.”
Culture critic: The Heretic We Need
Left-wing comedian Ricky Gervais has refused to “back away from any of his anti-woke jokes” or “his insistence that everybody is fair game for mockery” — decisions, Sumantra Maitra cheers at The Post Millennial, that make him “an apostate” to “the prophets of liberalism.” Liberal media blasted Gervais for making fun of celebrities as host of this year’s Golden Globe Awards. The wealthy Gervais “ridiculed the inherent contradictions of liberal morality and proselytizing,” which let even wealthier actors “prefer Chinese slave-labor goods and markets while boycotting Georgia for abortion laws.” No wonder elites considered him “a class-traitor” — or “a heretic.” Clearly, “we need more like him.”
Media watch: One Editor’s Extreme Agenda
Elle Reynolds at The Federalist details yet another outrageous tweet from Karen Attiah, The Washington Post’s global opinions editor. The since-deleted Twitter post warns that “white women are lucky that we are just calling them ‘Karens.’ And not calling for revenge.” It also blames white women’s “lies and tears” for events dating back to the 1921 Tulsa massacre. “Others on Twitter interpreted her tweet as a call for race-based violence,” Reynolds notes, while also flagging Attiah’s June 17 tweet demanding that “white people . . . figure this out how to erase the emotional rewards of sadistic pleasure white people have long enjoyed in dominating and destroying black bodies,” as well as the news that Attiah feels “stung” by her paper’s decision not to submit her work for a Pulitzer Prize.
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board