And then there’s Wiki
I often use Wiki for reference, although I’m aware that it’s better for some things than for others. It’s pretty good on non-political topics, and some historical events. It’s an easy shortcut to getting the gist of a topic, and it’s mostly an amalgam of quotes from other sources, which can be found in the bibliography for each entry. For politicians, it’s especially handy for finding out birthdays and ages, and what years the person held certain offices.
But it has a decidedly leftist cast when it enters into any sort of editorializing on some of its entries, in particular modern-day pundits and politicians. In line with today’s earlier post featuring a James Lindsay video on Gramsci, I decided to look up Lindsay’s Wiki page. I’ve listened to many of Lindsay’s videos, and I ordinarily find them comprehensive and informative. Yes, he has a point of view, but it seems fairly grounded in reality and in line with my own observations. I wouldn’t doubt that he’s said a line or two with which I might disagree, but I don’t often hear anything like that from him.
And yet on Lindsay’s Wiki page he is discounted as a “conspiracy theorist” right in the very first sentence: “James Stephen Lindsay (born June 8, 1979, known professionally as James A. Lindsay), is an American author, cultural critic, mathematician and conspiracy theorist.” I guess it’s a case of nothing to see here; move along.
And what are his supposed conspiracy theories, according to the extremely objective folks at Wiki? Why, this sort of thing:
(1) “He is a proponent of the right-wing LGBT grooming conspiracy theory and has been credited as one of several public figures responsible for popularizing ‘groomer’ as a slur directed at LGBTQ educators and activists by members of the political right.”
I happen to have heard Lindsay expound on that, and I recall his explanation being that those who push early sex education in public schools go way beyond the sort of sex education that most people would support: the dangers of STDs and that sort of thing. Now, says Lindsay, they are getting very explicit about sex practices, encouraging children to talk about their own sexuality and to acknowledge their own sexual needs, and pushing hard on transgender ideology at younger and younger ages. Lindsay has explained that his use of the word “groomer” is not meant to accuse them of actively molesting young children, but to say that getting very young children accustomed to talking to strangers about sex is to “groom” them in ways that will make them more susceptible to actual molesters, and also to undermine whatever their parents might have to say on the subject.
Here’s a quote from Lindsay:
They are bringing up sexual topics with children, normalizing discussions of sex with children, telling children to hide it from their parents. These are all behaviors that if it was predatory pedophiles, we would immediately apply the word ‘groomer,’ but they’re doing it for cult purposes, using the same subjects….
The goal is to destabilize people. The goal is to destabilize these kids. It’s to make them unsure of their identity, to put them in a position where there’s going to be conflict with their family, where there’s going to be conflict with their faith. Many will withdraw from family and faith. And the reason that they’re using this technique is because they know it works…
Once those seeds of doubt are planted in a potential target, Lindsay said, the next step is to have them recite humiliating in-group creeds, such as stating their “preferred” personal pronouns or citing land acknowledgements, stating that the land Americans live on was stolen from Native Americans.
(2) According to Wiki, Linday supposedly said that if CRT goes much further there will be a genocide of white people. However, Wiki doesn’t provide the actual quote; it just mentions one of his critics – Claire Lehmann – and what she said about what Lindsay said. I believe I’ve located Lindsay’s quote, which is here:
I said that the Woke ideology contains the seed of a genocide. The evidence for that is actually overwhelming. Perhaps Claire doesn’t know what seeds are or how they work.
(3) Another example Wiki provides of Lindsay’s conspiracy theories is this:
Lindsay has promoted the far-right Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, which alleges a concerted effort by Marxist critical theorists to infiltrate academic and cultural institutions in order to destroy Western civilization. The theory has been wholly rejected by mainstream scholars…
Why, that does it! The “mainstream scholars” – many of whom are probably on the left – have rejected it! So we should ignore the evidence right before our eyes, because of course it isn’t happening at all.
Wiki adds that this theory “has been characterized as antisemitic by the Southern Poverty Law Center and others.” So if that other bastion of objective analysis, the SPLC, has declared something to be antisemitic, that’s all ye need to know.
The sad thing is that, if I were to recommend Lindsay’s work to most people I know, and they looked Lindsay up, they would probably discount anything he said as being wild crazy conspiracy stuff. That’s the aim of a Wiki entry like that, and Lindsay is hardly alone. And the SPLC knows exactly what it’s doing to further the leftist line.
The “put it right in the first sentence” practice is typical on Wikipedia. Often the Infogalactic version of the article (taken from Wikipedia) has the tendentiousness edited out.
The SPLC is a monster with hundreds of million $ at its command, founded in 1971 by three blacks, including the clean, charming, articulate Julian Bond. Donations by whites grew it.
It has turned into a leftist racist monster.
Another Wikipedia tendency that annoys me is how often the political affiliations of people famous for non political reasons are included. If from the UK it’s often how some actor voted on Brexit or how they are such a supporter of ‘pride’ or they ‘identify’ as non binary or something and if it is an ‘approved’ position it is portrayed without commentary but if the person has the ‘unapproved’ views they are cast in a very negative light.
The politicization of everything and everyone was a very early sign of what has since come.
I discovered in the whole kimberlin matter how the talk section shows where the entry is edited, it is rather striking however, what is left out and what is included
Wife and I went to see “Sound of Freedom” on the 4th. When we got home she asked me what was the time frame for that movie, so I looked up Mr. Ballard on Wiki. All about Q-anon and being a conspiracy theorist, little about saving children. When you can’t win the argument, ad hominem attacks will do.
they are really keen on child trafficking it seems
https://twitter.com/AuronMacintyre/status/1677445330290331648
Speaking of the Southern Poverty Law Center (or, better, the Southern Poverty Lie Center), in 2019 I did a case study of one of their typical smears: https://www.thesocialcontract.com/pdf/twentynine-three/tsc_29_3_nachman.pdf
It’s about 1,300 words …
==
Contrary to Cicero, I think the SPLC was founded by Morris Dees and some henchman, both of whom are white.
The SPLC is a monster with hundreds of million $ at its command, founded in 1971 by three blacks, including the clean, charming, articulate Julian Bond. Donations by whites grew it.
==
Not by Bond. By Morris Dees, a direct mail impresario who saw a business opportunity. Recall what Eric Hoffer had to say. They skipped over ’cause’ and ‘business’ and went straight to ‘racket’. This has been known about the $PLC since 1995, when it was exposed as a grifting operation by metro newspapers in Alabama. Out of a combination of stupidity and malice, the media and woke-tards in corporate bureaucracies pretend it is an authoritative source.
“…those who push early sex education in public schools go way beyond the sort of sex education that most people would support: the dangers of STDs and that sort of thing. ”
• I am old enough to remember when Sex Education was introduced in the schools, and how dismayed/ uncomfortable my HS teachers – PE, Home-Ec – were with being required to talk about the various topics.
• In hindsight this strikes me as an example of: The Slippery Slope. There might have been some parents that were relieved that they did not have to discuss those topics – Reproduction, Birth Control, STDs, etc. – but I don’t think the majority felt that way (my parents covered all that at home). And what I learned from the Sex Education curriculum was not necessary for AP courses, SATs, Employment, etc. – pretty sure that is still true today. However, decades later it is so “well established” that Sex Education is part of the school’s portfolio that the issue is not ‘Why’ but ‘Why Not’.
• To paraphrase John Roberts: The way to stop sexually indoctrinating students, is to stop sexually indoctrinating students. I’ll add that Sex Education is a curriculum that has ceased to be necessary – Boomers & Gen X can actually handle this – and should be discontinued in all pre-Tertiary grades.
…And then there’s YouTube…
“YouTube Censors Australian Politician’s Maiden Speech To Parliament”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/youtube-censors-australian-politicians-maiden-speech-parliament
Opening grafs:
‘ “30 minutes of truth bombs” is how one Twitter user described Liberal Democrat John Ruddick’s maiden speech to the New South Wales (NSW) Parliament, last Wednesday 28 June. “Indeed, Ruddick, who left the Liberal Party in 2021 after public disagreements over the Party’s handling of the pandemic response, said out loud in parliament what many Australians have been saying for some time now…as saying the obvious becomes more socially acceptable.
‘ Nevertheless, what is socially acceptable offline is not necessarily acceptable on social media. YouTube swiftly removed Ruddick’s speech from its platform, just seven hours after it was uploaded. The NSW Liberal Democrats say this is the first time in Australian history that a politician’s maiden speech has been censored by the platform….” [Emphasis mine; Barry M.]
Not just in OZ, of course…
– – – – – – – – – – –
And some more uber-creative Constitutional abracadabra by “Biden” Constitutional Scholars (TM)
“White House Spox Defends Admissions Discrimination As ‘Important Constitutional Right’ ”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/white-house-spox-defends-admissions-discrimination-important-constitutional-right
Related:
“The EU’s Mass Censorship Regime Is Almost Fully Operational. Will It Go Global?”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/eus-mass-censorship-regime-almost-fully-operational-will-it-go-global
Answer: With the WTF’s gnomes, trolls and goblins gleefully working overtime, the chances are excellent…unless Musk has something totally insane (in the Jobsian sense) up his sleeve…
OTOH, the Gods have been known to work in mysterious way…(on occasion, at least…), e.g.,
“Dutch Government Collapses Amid Deadlock Over Immigration Policy”—
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/dutch-government-collapses-amid-deadlock-over-immigration-policy
“Germany’s far-right AfD wins vote to lead district for first time”—
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/germanys-far-right-afd-wins-vote-lead-district-first-time-2023-06-25/
“Spain’s Conservative PP Party Makes Gains a Month Ahead of National Vote, Poll Shows”—
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2023-07-01/spains-conservative-pp-party-makes-gains-a-month-ahead-of-national-vote-poll-shows
…Not forgetting what happened in the Swedish election several months back.
(And then there is France…the land of “Rien a voir ici…”?)
The “put it right in the first sentence” practice is typical on Wikipedia.
The exact opposite of ‘burying the lede’, right?
Paul-
I took the info about SPLC’s 3 founders from WIKI. There is no question, based on my memory, that Julian Bond was a public face of SPLC.
“Cultural Marxism” is a label. It’s not a priori invalid. The progressive tendency now is far from “liberalism,” but it isn’t classical Marxism either. So what to call it? “Cultural Marxism” seems like as good a place as any to start, so long as you recognize that it isn’t classical Marxism (and may not have all that much to do with culture, either).
The “conspiracy theory” is that the Frankfurt School Marxists planned today’s dominant “successor ideology” and have been working hard to put it in place. Like other conspiracy theories it recognizes real influences, but thinks of them too concretely. Adorno and Horkheimer had long careers and had a lot of ideas through the years. Much of the time they had to deal with the failure of Marxism. Some of their ideas fit in with today’s progressive thinking. Others don’t. There was a phase in their careers when they voiced ideas that sound eerily similar to today’s progressives, but it would be wrong to think of them as busy conspirators or as the fountainheads of DEI. Were they alive today, they might be skeptical of today’s progressives as they were of the radicals of the 1960s. Corporations and bureaucracies are going to create Utopia by catering to minority groups? Maybe, but maybe not. Marcuse was a supporter and inspirer of the youth revolution of the 1960s, and you can certainly see similarities between his ideas and what we have now.
“Grooming” is a metaphor. It points to a truth, but the distinction between literal and metaphorical “groomers” should be kept in mind. The left has its own conspiracy theories. The idea that the Koch brothers, or some DC think tank, or a memo written by Lewis Powell 50 years ago are to blame for the loss of what they regard as a Golden Age. Like other conspiracy theories, they are oversimplifications, and mistake influences for determining factors. So far as I know, wikipedia doesn’t label such myths “conspiracy theories.”
There is no question, based on my memory, that Julian Bond was a public face of SPLC.
==
Never seen his name associated with it. Just Dees.
see how accomodating wikipedia is to certain subjects
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Brett_Kimberlin
Julian Bond was a co-founder of the SPLC and served as its president for about its first decade.
I stand corrected. (I think Bond was a mark as well).
N.B. and tired old complaint: Wikipedia ongoing and aggressive denial of pages for Ashli Babbit and Eric Ciaramella.