It’s got to the stage at which, during my initial dealings with any business, governmental or quasi-governmental agency, school, university, charity, or any other organisation, I always preface discussions between us with the declaration that I have zero tolerance for wokeness, that Black Lives Matter is a racist hate group, that a man is the producer and emitter of small motile gametes whereas a woman is the producer and carrier of large immotile gametes and that men can’t become women, and that I do not tolerate having my language policed, and that any attempt to introduce woke agenda into our discussion will result in its immediate termination and the immediate termination of any business between us.
Glad to hear I am not alone. I have lost count of the websites I have left the minute they hit me woke the woke nonsense. I’ve even canceled paid subscriptions because of it.
I’m cancelling The Times as soon as I’m allowed to by the £1 3 month subscription. I can’t stand how woke it is, and the readers are even more extreme.
Yep. Ditched my RSA membership a couple of years ago for this reason. Had initially thought the interns had got hold of the comms with no oversight over the nonsense they were generating. Then I read some of their then CEO’s nonsense and realised wokeness was top down and endemic.
How do you have any clients left? Kudos to you, but I’m surprised some mid-level bureaucrat with a BS master’s hasn’t organized a major campaign against you.
It was an idea
Sprung in my head
across a sea of foam
She was my first Love
I thought she was so
BEAUTIFUL
She sent me to school
taught me the
Golden Rule
I was no fool
Solid as Bronze
carved out of Parisian Liberté, égalité, Fraternité
Statues for US
not kings
sing
Helen could I Kiss thy face
Mariam would you let
me get
to second base
Love is not a Disgrace
This Place?
God did not go to Art School
All this Ugly Droll !
But what is the most beautiful ?
Why a life of free rule !
Lady Liberty, that Statue.
Oh what launches she did displace
Achilles in the Heel
Soldiers dressed in Steel
Troy we Will Destroy
We will Destroy
And burnt the topless towers of tabulae ansatae
Go give to Helen the kiss she’s due.
She’s not a lady
Just an Image that I would Kill For.
Ah Faustus
The opening of Bk4 of my heroic couplet satire, The Wokeiad by Richard Craven:-
……….
Behold the monstrous regiment of woke,
Science’s nemesis and but of joke.
First waddle past the squads of scowling smurfs,
With cardboard signs excoriating TERFs.
The sunlight bounces off each azure scalp
And dandruff glitters like a Switzer alp.
Above white knee socks, fat and dimpled thighs
Betray the sacrifice of untold pies.
Hotpants which emphasise the camel toe,
As Adam’s apple does the beard’s shadow. 1210
O’er each fraying belt tremulous blubber juts,
On porcine face the lipsticked gob tut-tuts.
The cheesecloth working shirt with rolled-up sleeves!
The animosity! The petty peeves!
With pond’rous tread they stamp upon the ground.
Buildings collapse, and light aircraft are downed.
The birds fall silent and the dead revive,
It isn’t bliss that dawn to be alive.
Next marches Antifa’s Sturmabteilung,
From lamp posts effigies of Jews are hung. 1220
Black shirts they wear, and black shorts underneath.
Black are their souls, and equally their teeth.
Pissant pathetic parliament of fools,
The stinking sewage of the public schools,
Tarquin and Henrietta on the slum,
All trust-funded and terminally dumb.
Each wears a skateboard strapped across their chest,
Razors embedded, and a kevlar vest.
With lowered standards dragged through guttered muck,
They show the world how they don’t give a fvck: 1230
Portraits of Molotov with Ribbentrop,
The Red Flag with the Swastika on top,
Sayings of Mao, diktats of Xi Jin Ping,
The vanguard does its genocidal thing.
Behind on tumbrils prisoners are drawn,
The lumpen proles, objects of Twitter scorn.
The hipsters at their whiteness take the pee,
Joke about rickets and Vitamin D.
Now Black Lives Matter flaunt their camouflage,
And fling their epithets at Nigel F’rage, 1240
And Jon Snow fainting falls upon the floor;
So many white people he never saw.
They pull down statues and they “take the knee”,
Dismantle whiteness and the family.
On surfaces four-lettered filth they spray
And chase the po-po and the Jews away.
A black conservative in tailored suit
Disturbs the felons as they burn and loot.
They beat him with their skateboards on the head
And with their razors roughly shave his dreads, 1250
And call him “pet nijjer” and “coconut”.
The businesses they burn! The stores they gut!
Maggot on civis, roach horde under fridge,
The botulism in the club sandwich.
And as they march, they hold aloft their texts
and Wokeness wreaks remorseless her effects.
’Tis now the turn of the Aquarians,
Vegans or at least vegetarians,
To shuffle past in sandals open-toed
And fill the screen for a brief episode. 1260
Homeopath, post-fascist charity
Wanting in intellectual clarity,
Hidebound opponent of the microscope
Sworn enemy of bath and bar of soap.
The creepy masseur and the mesmerist,
The slightly rapey male feminist.
Organic farmer and anarcho-trot
Who worship a Swedish child idiot.
Eugenic theory, both the why and how.
Worzel Gummidge reads Thoughts of Chairman Mao. 1270
A special place in Hell’s for the Vert Rouge
For their cruel primitive subterfuge.
A captive dragged on ropes staggers behind,
Vitamin A-deficient, almost blind.
They taunt him with handfuls of Golden Rice
Dropped in the gutter for the rats and mice.
As these march past odours suffuse the nose
Of the manure in which the poison grows:
The combination of patchouli oil
Leavened with the sour reek of armpit royal, 1280
The cat lady redolent of old tom,
The battle axe with face like Herbert Lom.
In thick wool tights huge women come and go,
Talking of long drop toilets and Osho.
I cancelled my NT membership due to its “Anti-Racism” virtue-signaling, but re-joined after the board reacted against it. Ditto for Tate Britain after being educated about the racism inherent in a chair portrayed in a Hogarth painting. Such humiliating and absurd displays only serve to erode respect for cultural institutions.
BO
Brendan O'Leary
1 year ago
Not just utter incuriousity about where the money went, but downright hostility toward anyone who asks.
.
Where did it go?
Who exactly got it?
What exactly did they do with it?
The same can be said for so many other fashionable causes and collections.
A neighbor of mine recently posted a sign that simply reads, “You Matter”
JE
Judy Englander
1 year ago
What struck me most was: the good white folks of Darien 1) imported a black speaker from Brooklyn for their BLM protest rather than a black neighbour from nearby Norwalk, and 2) even more hypocritically, rejected a proposal to include 12 Norwalk kindergartens in their top-rated school district.
It was glaringly obvious to many of us but some people are so desperate for ‘likes’ that they’ll do or so whatever is required to be seen to be a good person.
BT
burke schmollinger
1 year ago
It’s strange seeing these movements held up as a class signifier, which reached a fever during the Trump and Covid years. The BLM sign isn’t their for Black people, it’s there to tell you “we’re the good people.”
I’ve noticed there’s a similar trend in the UK press, when they’re not just appropriating our protests for social credit (protesting racist police in the UK? Seriously?), there’s this strange fascination with apologizing for past historical sins. Almost as if bringing up past evils is a way to keep themselves relevant in the “right on” conversation even if whatever it is has been irrelevant for years.
Every year I hear a story on NPR commemorating some Indian massacre from the 1920s. I never hear anyone commemorating the genocide on the subcontinent that occurred within a generation of independence from the UK.
And don’t get me started on Canadians apologizing and tearing themselves apart for -wait for it- sending impoverished children to school.
I had a similar argument two years ago when I refused to self flagellate because my British ancestors where responsible for slavery the world over. My point being, they weren’t my ancestors. Being white and British doesn’t automatically make me the descendant of Slave traders and I will not apologise for something that has nothing to do with me or my family. Most white British ancestors of white British people were working in the mills or the pits during this period. The sh!tty jobs that the aristocracy/mill/pit owners wouldn’t waste good money buying slaves to do!
Last edited 1 year ago by Lindsay S
WT
Warren Trees
1 year ago
There are very wealthy predominately black neighborhoods as well. I am certainly not rich, by any definition, but I believe strongly in law and order, being on time, mathematics, western culture and that capitalism has created more wealth for poor people than any other system the planet has ever known. If you believe the same, and happen to be black, we can be wonderful acquaintances, or even friends. If not, we probably won’t be, regardless of your skin color.
Agreed. This article is excellent because it does what all great articles should do – take something I am myself unable to articulate and proffer it with dizzying clarity.
The dopamine rush I got from reading this felt euphoric
LS
leculdesac suburbia
1 year ago
Awesome. Thank you so much for describing it all so succinctly, accurately, and vividly.
It almost makes me want to re-activate my FB account to post it and pick fights with the narcissistic white “anti-racism” consultants among my past “friends” who are making bank off of this latest grift.
Forwarded it to all my favorite people this morning.
RP
REP 0
1 year ago
This article left out the 30+ people killed in the “mostly peaceful riots” and the $2bn plus of damage done by the demonstrations. Friends across the US told me that their down town area was on fire. Yet crickets from the media as it did not fit the narrative. BLM funds seem to have ended up in a real estate portfolio…
JH
J. Hale
1 year ago
“lamenting the conditions that nourish inequality.” Yes, but these conditions include inequality in intelligence, initiative, scholastic aptititude, social skills etc. The only way to eliminate inequality is to install a totalitarian government that transfers power, money, and property from those who have it to those who want it. Anyone who objects is sent to the gulag. We’ve seen this before in history and it doesn’t turn out well.
Exactly. According to cultural Marxism, everyone who is “marginalized” or “oppressed” is so, not because of the vicissitudes and complexities of human beings and the societies they create, but because of systemic hierarchies and dominant power structures. Individual responsibility is not factored into the equation.
SW
SIMON WOLF
1 year ago
It is their brainwashed woke children who are the real problem and how they going to escape being born with ‘horrible’ white skin.
Its incredibly sad but two teenagers from same school dying by suicide within a couple months of each other, both good athletes and popular kids. Another 16 year old from same school dead from medical complications in the same period. Brutal for that community.
DJ
DA Johnson
1 year ago
Kat Rosenfield has nailed the current iteration of this phenomenon. It’s not a new aspect of human hypocrisy–her reference to buying “indulgences” harks back to Christian practices in the Middle Ages–only now the indulgences are for political instead of religious reasons.
Thomas Wolfe described the 1920’s version of indulgence buying in “The Party at Jack’s”, in which wealthy New Yorkers at a cocktail party avow their Socialist solidarity with the “workers of the world”, yet where the only “workers” in sight are the maids serving them.
And Tom Wolfe got the 1970’s version down in his book “Radical Chic”, portraying the actual party given by Leonard Bernstein for wealthy arts patrons, to which he invited members of the “Black Panthers”.
Last edited 1 year ago by DA Johnson
MB
Mathieu Bernard
1 year ago
I think Shelby Steele really nailed this issue in his insightful book, “White Guilt.” He basically makes the case that white liberal elites perceived the need to somehow “dissociate” themselves from racism and social injustice. With the new accentuation of historical wrongs, and faced with a need to absolve themselves from collective sins and regain their moral authority, these elites jumped on any bandwagon (anti-Americanism, anti-racism, etc.) that would assuage their guilt. Steele writes, “dissociation is inherently elitist. Automatically, it creates a new kind of American [or Brit, or whatever other guilty Westerner one is] because he has conspicuously dissociated from the litany of [his nation’s] sins. I suppose the operative word here is “conspicuously,” since one cannot virtue signal successfully in a closet. As a consequence, all this harried frenzy of dissociation becomes a kind of nauseating “collective narcissism” to which this article refers.
JJ
James Jenkin
1 year ago
A well-made point about expressing luxury beliefs to signal status.
But why do we signal this kind of status? There must be more to it than simply feeling good at dinner parties and the golf club.
What are the real-world material benefits? Do older people in media and academia hang onto their jobs? Do businesspeople keep workers in their place? Do we get better quality partners?
The point is that nothing material changes, whereas a wealth tax, a tax on financials as opposed to earnings, re-industrialisation and maybe a bit of protectionism while the re-industrialism happens, and going back to the idea of a meritocracy as a desirable thing — all of these are likely to hit the wealthy in the pocketbook.
I agree. I was just thinking that, whether or not some group of in a “vape-filled back Zoom” planned it, all of the class-conscious energy that might have united a lot of Americans across race, ethnicity, and geography has all gone into virtue-signaling and obsessively policing ourselves and others to ensure conformity. Segwayed beautifully into COVID, which sort of standardized the mold.
It’s also about being fashionable. Once you have a mansion in a nice enclave with a few Teslas in your garage and your kids in Ivy League universities you can’t afford to be left out of intellectual fashions involving public rituals of politically correct signage and events.
Excellent article. Virtue signaling without much cost.
DM
Duane McPherson
1 year ago
Great analysis, and yes it’s ironic that the wealthy and privileged can gain status by publicly criticizing the wealthy and privileged. But I guess that is the way it was also during the Cultural Revolution in China, when to keep your reputation and social position you had to first confess all of your social sins (including those that you invented to enhance your confession). A lot of cults work the same way.
Significant also and along side this social phenomenon, it’s worth noting how comfortably corporations have adapted to the new social manners, perhaps because declaring solidarity with BLM and transgender activism has no appreciable negative effect on the bottom line of the ledger, except for the mild expense of hiring additional Human Resources officers to adminster progressive training and adjudicate perceived transgressions.
A real win-win for corporate capitalism!
Last edited 1 year ago by Duane McPherson
WH
William Hickey
1 year ago
Yes. Ms Rosenfield mentions the lack of interest in where the BLM money went and also the next fashionable cause, Ukraine.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that there was only one US Senator, Rand Paul, who insisted that there be some oversight on where America’s $40 billion appropriated for Ukraine would be spent — and that he was vilified by the media faithful.
PD
Paul Davies
1 year ago
Just for the record, I watched all of the George Floyd trial and although Chauvin appeared to be a pretty unpleasant person, he did not murder George Floyd. There was some evidence to at best convict for manslaughter however with the force which built up for a conviction, fact and evidence flew out the window.
Are you sure you watched the whole thing, Paul? He was convicted for second-degree murder. What that means is death through reckless conduct/obvious lack of concern for human life… rather like manslaughter. So, the court essentially agreed with your own analysis of the evidence…
MB
maria Brogna
1 year ago
Beautifully written observation. I work in the very systems that pretend to be concerned. The public sector, and I’ve been on every side of this issue. The pomposity of these people, who clearly move to these places to distance themselves from the people their claim to infallible self righteousness is about, is deafening.
And the fact the government & ethics committees are ignoring the embezzlement while the media is creating the ridiculous narrative that the 501(c) structure is racist which is why the people who have used donations to increase their wealth aren’t responsible, is astounding. BLM has no executive management or accounting teams. Its a well of money for the new generation of snake oil salesmen who don’t even have the decency to pretend to care about the communities & people they exploit. Fiends.
DA
Dominic A
1 year ago
This sounds like an intersectional problem – Narcissism blended with Munchausens by proxy.
WT
Warren Trees
1 year ago
“Which brings us to the question of what will happen now, when Black Lives Matter is no longer the hot new trend, the must-have status symbol.” Wait until the Metaverse takes hold! Every day will host a new flashy red herring to spend money on.
DH
Douglas H
1 year ago
Thanks, Kat. Unfortunately you are right.
IS
Ian Stewart
1 year ago
Wouldn’t it be fun if these woke elite white districts stopping minorities getting into their education system got pinged by their own woke side?
CH
chris henry
1 year ago
What an article! The worst form of hypocrisy. Although I empathize with this town and their recent tragedies, nobody deserves to lose their kids. But this behaviour is detestable really.
EH
E. L. Herndon
1 year ago
Who remembers Tom Wolfe’s Radical Chic, Maumau-ing the Flakcatchers? Plus ca change…
DM
Douglas McNeish
1 year ago
Those virtue-signalers with political objectives are of course quick to point at those not displaying the BLM sign as “deplorables,” thus re-enforcing the barrier that keeps them out of the higher-status woke elite.
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It’s got to the stage at which, during my initial dealings with any business, governmental or quasi-governmental agency, school, university, charity, or any other organisation, I always preface discussions between us with the declaration that I have zero tolerance for wokeness, that Black Lives Matter is a racist hate group, that a man is the producer and emitter of small motile gametes whereas a woman is the producer and carrier of large immotile gametes and that men can’t become women, and that I do not tolerate having my language policed, and that any attempt to introduce woke agenda into our discussion will result in its immediate termination and the immediate termination of any business between us.
Glad to hear I am not alone. I have lost count of the websites I have left the minute they hit me woke the woke nonsense. I’ve even canceled paid subscriptions because of it.
I’m cancelling The Times as soon as I’m allowed to by the £1 3 month subscription. I can’t stand how woke it is, and the readers are even more extreme.
Yep. Ditched my RSA membership a couple of years ago for this reason. Had initially thought the interns had got hold of the comms with no oversight over the nonsense they were generating. Then I read some of their then CEO’s nonsense and realised wokeness was top down and endemic.
How do you have any clients left? Kudos to you, but I’m surprised some mid-level bureaucrat with a BS master’s hasn’t organized a major campaign against you.
I am the client.
Is that before or after they ask how you take your coffee?
I have it BLACK, but it’s ok to have it ({[white]}).
Her Name Was
AMERIKA
It was an idea
Sprung in my head
across a sea of foam
She was my first Love
I thought she was so
BEAUTIFUL
She sent me to school
taught me the
Golden Rule
I was no fool
Solid as Bronze
carved out of Parisian
Liberté, égalité, Fraternité
Statues for US
not kings
sing
Helen could I Kiss thy face
Mariam would you let
me get
to second base
Love is not a Disgrace
This Place?
God did not go to Art School
All this Ugly Droll !
But what is the most beautiful ?
Why a life of free rule !
Lady Liberty, that Statue.
Oh what launches she did displace
Achilles in the Heel
Soldiers dressed in Steel
Troy we Will Destroy
We will Destroy
And burnt the topless towers of tabulae ansatae
Go give to Helen the kiss she’s due.
She’s not a lady
Just an Image that I would Kill For.
Ah Faustus
The opening of Bk4 of my heroic couplet satire, The Wokeiad by Richard Craven:-
……….
Behold the monstrous regiment of woke,
Science’s nemesis and but of joke.
First waddle past the squads of scowling smurfs,
With cardboard signs excoriating TERFs.
The sunlight bounces off each azure scalp
And dandruff glitters like a Switzer alp.
Above white knee socks, fat and dimpled thighs
Betray the sacrifice of untold pies.
Hotpants which emphasise the camel toe,
As Adam’s apple does the beard’s shadow. 1210
O’er each fraying belt tremulous blubber juts,
On porcine face the lipsticked gob tut-tuts.
The cheesecloth working shirt with rolled-up sleeves!
The animosity! The petty peeves!
With pond’rous tread they stamp upon the ground.
Buildings collapse, and light aircraft are downed.
The birds fall silent and the dead revive,
It isn’t bliss that dawn to be alive.
Next marches Antifa’s Sturmabteilung,
From lamp posts effigies of Jews are hung. 1220
Black shirts they wear, and black shorts underneath.
Black are their souls, and equally their teeth.
Pissant pathetic parliament of fools,
The stinking sewage of the public schools,
Tarquin and Henrietta on the slum,
All trust-funded and terminally dumb.
Each wears a skateboard strapped across their chest,
Razors embedded, and a kevlar vest.
With lowered standards dragged through guttered muck,
They show the world how they don’t give a fvck: 1230
Portraits of Molotov with Ribbentrop,
The Red Flag with the Swastika on top,
Sayings of Mao, diktats of Xi Jin Ping,
The vanguard does its genocidal thing.
Behind on tumbrils prisoners are drawn,
The lumpen proles, objects of Twitter scorn.
The hipsters at their whiteness take the pee,
Joke about rickets and Vitamin D.
Now Black Lives Matter flaunt their camouflage,
And fling their epithets at Nigel F’rage, 1240
And Jon Snow fainting falls upon the floor;
So many white people he never saw.
They pull down statues and they “take the knee”,
Dismantle whiteness and the family.
On surfaces four-lettered filth they spray
And chase the po-po and the Jews away.
A black conservative in tailored suit
Disturbs the felons as they burn and loot.
They beat him with their skateboards on the head
And with their razors roughly shave his dreads, 1250
And call him “pet nijjer” and “coconut”.
The businesses they burn! The stores they gut!
Maggot on civis, roach horde under fridge,
The botulism in the club sandwich.
And as they march, they hold aloft their texts
and Wokeness wreaks remorseless her effects.
’Tis now the turn of the Aquarians,
Vegans or at least vegetarians,
To shuffle past in sandals open-toed
And fill the screen for a brief episode. 1260
Homeopath, post-fascist charity
Wanting in intellectual clarity,
Hidebound opponent of the microscope
Sworn enemy of bath and bar of soap.
The creepy masseur and the mesmerist,
The slightly rapey male feminist.
Organic farmer and anarcho-trot
Who worship a Swedish child idiot.
Eugenic theory, both the why and how.
Worzel Gummidge reads Thoughts of Chairman Mao. 1270
A special place in Hell’s for the Vert Rouge
For their cruel primitive subterfuge.
A captive dragged on ropes staggers behind,
Vitamin A-deficient, almost blind.
They taunt him with handfuls of Golden Rice
Dropped in the gutter for the rats and mice.
As these march past odours suffuse the nose
Of the manure in which the poison grows:
The combination of patchouli oil
Leavened with the sour reek of armpit royal, 1280
The cat lady redolent of old tom,
The battle axe with face like Herbert Lom.
In thick wool tights huge women come and go,
Talking of long drop toilets and Osho.
I cancelled my NT membership due to its “Anti-Racism” virtue-signaling, but re-joined after the board reacted against it. Ditto for Tate Britain after being educated about the racism inherent in a chair portrayed in a Hogarth painting. Such humiliating and absurd displays only serve to erode respect for cultural institutions.
Not just utter incuriousity about where the money went, but downright hostility toward anyone who asks.
.
Where did it go?
Who exactly got it?
What exactly did they do with it?
The same can be said for so many other fashionable causes and collections.
‘Twas a scam, as was clear right from the outset when racism cloaked in a new garb became acceptable.
Well said Brendan and Drach.
The wokeist response? Reparations of course.
It’d save time and money if they just had the signs say “I Support the Current Thing” so they didn’t have to replace them.
A neighbor of mine recently posted a sign that simply reads, “You Matter”
What struck me most was: the good white folks of Darien 1) imported a black speaker from Brooklyn for their BLM protest rather than a black neighbour from nearby Norwalk, and 2) even more hypocritically, rejected a proposal to include 12 Norwalk kindergartens in their top-rated school district.
Limousine Liberals have always been striking hypocrites.
It speaks to profound insecurity.
Excellent piece that sums up what should have been glaringly obvious all along.
It was glaringly obvious to many of us but some people are so desperate for ‘likes’ that they’ll do or so whatever is required to be seen to be a good person.
It’s strange seeing these movements held up as a class signifier, which reached a fever during the Trump and Covid years. The BLM sign isn’t their for Black people, it’s there to tell you “we’re the good people.”
I’ve noticed there’s a similar trend in the UK press, when they’re not just appropriating our protests for social credit (protesting racist police in the UK? Seriously?), there’s this strange fascination with apologizing for past historical sins. Almost as if bringing up past evils is a way to keep themselves relevant in the “right on” conversation even if whatever it is has been irrelevant for years.
Every year I hear a story on NPR commemorating some Indian massacre from the 1920s. I never hear anyone commemorating the genocide on the subcontinent that occurred within a generation of independence from the UK.
And don’t get me started on Canadians apologizing and tearing themselves apart for -wait for it- sending impoverished children to school.
I had a similar argument two years ago when I refused to self flagellate because my British ancestors where responsible for slavery the world over. My point being, they weren’t my ancestors. Being white and British doesn’t automatically make me the descendant of Slave traders and I will not apologise for something that has nothing to do with me or my family. Most white British ancestors of white British people were working in the mills or the pits during this period. The sh!tty jobs that the aristocracy/mill/pit owners wouldn’t waste good money buying slaves to do!
There are very wealthy predominately black neighborhoods as well. I am certainly not rich, by any definition, but I believe strongly in law and order, being on time, mathematics, western culture and that capitalism has created more wealth for poor people than any other system the planet has ever known. If you believe the same, and happen to be black, we can be wonderful acquaintances, or even friends. If not, we probably won’t be, regardless of your skin color.
Absolutely nailed it……..
Agreed. This article is excellent because it does what all great articles should do – take something I am myself unable to articulate and proffer it with dizzying clarity.
The dopamine rush I got from reading this felt euphoric
Awesome. Thank you so much for describing it all so succinctly, accurately, and vividly.
It almost makes me want to re-activate my FB account to post it and pick fights with the narcissistic white “anti-racism” consultants among my past “friends” who are making bank off of this latest grift.
Forwarded it to all my favorite people this morning.
This article left out the 30+ people killed in the “mostly peaceful riots” and the $2bn plus of damage done by the demonstrations. Friends across the US told me that their down town area was on fire. Yet crickets from the media as it did not fit the narrative. BLM funds seem to have ended up in a real estate portfolio…
“lamenting the conditions that nourish inequality.” Yes, but these conditions include inequality in intelligence, initiative, scholastic aptititude, social skills etc. The only way to eliminate inequality is to install a totalitarian government that transfers power, money, and property from those who have it to those who want it. Anyone who objects is sent to the gulag. We’ve seen this before in history and it doesn’t turn out well.
Exactly. According to cultural Marxism, everyone who is “marginalized” or “oppressed” is so, not because of the vicissitudes and complexities of human beings and the societies they create, but because of systemic hierarchies and dominant power structures. Individual responsibility is not factored into the equation.
It is their brainwashed woke children who are the real problem and how they going to escape being born with ‘horrible’ white skin.
Its incredibly sad but two teenagers from same school dying by suicide within a couple months of each other, both good athletes and popular kids. Another 16 year old from same school dead from medical complications in the same period. Brutal for that community.
Kat Rosenfield has nailed the current iteration of this phenomenon. It’s not a new aspect of human hypocrisy–her reference to buying “indulgences” harks back to Christian practices in the Middle Ages–only now the indulgences are for political instead of religious reasons.
Thomas Wolfe described the 1920’s version of indulgence buying in “The Party at Jack’s”, in which wealthy New Yorkers at a cocktail party avow their Socialist solidarity with the “workers of the world”, yet where the only “workers” in sight are the maids serving them.
And Tom Wolfe got the 1970’s version down in his book “Radical Chic”, portraying the actual party given by Leonard Bernstein for wealthy arts patrons, to which he invited members of the “Black Panthers”.
I think Shelby Steele really nailed this issue in his insightful book, “White Guilt.” He basically makes the case that white liberal elites perceived the need to somehow “dissociate” themselves from racism and social injustice. With the new accentuation of historical wrongs, and faced with a need to absolve themselves from collective sins and regain their moral authority, these elites jumped on any bandwagon (anti-Americanism, anti-racism, etc.) that would assuage their guilt. Steele writes, “dissociation is inherently elitist. Automatically, it creates a new kind of American [or Brit, or whatever other guilty Westerner one is] because he has conspicuously dissociated from the litany of [his nation’s] sins. I suppose the operative word here is “conspicuously,” since one cannot virtue signal successfully in a closet. As a consequence, all this harried frenzy of dissociation becomes a kind of nauseating “collective narcissism” to which this article refers.
A well-made point about expressing luxury beliefs to signal status.
But why do we signal this kind of status? There must be more to it than simply feeling good at dinner parties and the golf club.
What are the real-world material benefits? Do older people in media and academia hang onto their jobs? Do businesspeople keep workers in their place? Do we get better quality partners?
The point is that nothing material changes, whereas a wealth tax, a tax on financials as opposed to earnings, re-industrialisation and maybe a bit of protectionism while the re-industrialism happens, and going back to the idea of a meritocracy as a desirable thing — all of these are likely to hit the wealthy in the pocketbook.
I agree. I was just thinking that, whether or not some group of in a “vape-filled back Zoom” planned it, all of the class-conscious energy that might have united a lot of Americans across race, ethnicity, and geography has all gone into virtue-signaling and obsessively policing ourselves and others to ensure conformity. Segwayed beautifully into COVID, which sort of standardized the mold.
Path of least resistance I guess
It’s also about being fashionable. Once you have a mansion in a nice enclave with a few Teslas in your garage and your kids in Ivy League universities you can’t afford to be left out of intellectual fashions involving public rituals of politically correct signage and events.
Spot on!
Excellent article. Virtue signaling without much cost.
Great analysis, and yes it’s ironic that the wealthy and privileged can gain status by publicly criticizing the wealthy and privileged. But I guess that is the way it was also during the Cultural Revolution in China, when to keep your reputation and social position you had to first confess all of your social sins (including those that you invented to enhance your confession). A lot of cults work the same way.
Significant also and along side this social phenomenon, it’s worth noting how comfortably corporations have adapted to the new social manners, perhaps because declaring solidarity with BLM and transgender activism has no appreciable negative effect on the bottom line of the ledger, except for the mild expense of hiring additional Human Resources officers to adminster progressive training and adjudicate perceived transgressions.
A real win-win for corporate capitalism!
Yes. Ms Rosenfield mentions the lack of interest in where the BLM money went and also the next fashionable cause, Ukraine.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that there was only one US Senator, Rand Paul, who insisted that there be some oversight on where America’s $40 billion appropriated for Ukraine would be spent — and that he was vilified by the media faithful.
Just for the record, I watched all of the George Floyd trial and although Chauvin appeared to be a pretty unpleasant person, he did not murder George Floyd. There was some evidence to at best convict for manslaughter however with the force which built up for a conviction, fact and evidence flew out the window.
Are you sure you watched the whole thing, Paul? He was convicted for second-degree murder. What that means is death through reckless conduct/obvious lack of concern for human life… rather like manslaughter. So, the court essentially agreed with your own analysis of the evidence…
Beautifully written observation. I work in the very systems that pretend to be concerned. The public sector, and I’ve been on every side of this issue. The pomposity of these people, who clearly move to these places to distance themselves from the people their claim to infallible self righteousness is about, is deafening.
And the fact the government & ethics committees are ignoring the embezzlement while the media is creating the ridiculous narrative that the 501(c) structure is racist which is why the people who have used donations to increase their wealth aren’t responsible, is astounding. BLM has no executive management or accounting teams. Its a well of money for the new generation of snake oil salesmen who don’t even have the decency to pretend to care about the communities & people they exploit. Fiends.
This sounds like an intersectional problem – Narcissism blended with Munchausens by proxy.
“Which brings us to the question of what will happen now, when Black Lives Matter is no longer the hot new trend, the must-have status symbol.”
Wait until the Metaverse takes hold! Every day will host a new flashy red herring to spend money on.
Thanks, Kat. Unfortunately you are right.
Wouldn’t it be fun if these woke elite white districts stopping minorities getting into their education system got pinged by their own woke side?
What an article! The worst form of hypocrisy. Although I empathize with this town and their recent tragedies, nobody deserves to lose their kids. But this behaviour is detestable really.
Who remembers Tom Wolfe’s Radical Chic, Maumau-ing the Flakcatchers? Plus ca change…
Those virtue-signalers with political objectives are of course quick to point at those not displaying the BLM sign as “deplorables,” thus re-enforcing the barrier that keeps them out of the higher-status woke elite.