by The speaker is the feminist Anita Sarkeesian.[embedded content]Whether this is just Sarkeesian’s rhetoric or a throw-away comment, it actually illustrates a deep problem with the modern left.Parts of the modern left have become a toxic mix of extreme identity politics, cultural relativism, Postmodernist nonsense, extremist Third Wave Feminism, hatred of free speech, hatred of men, and lack of interest in serious economic issues.For such people, *everything* is racist, sexist, and homophobic – and that is practically all they can talk about. This is unhinged nonsense.Take the issue of racism. Genuine racism, as I define it here, is at the lowest level it’s ever been. If you want to see real racism, go back to the 1890s to 1940s. Back in 1941 to 1945, there was mass genocide going on in Europe by the Nazis merely because people were the wrong race. Our world is vastly different from that lunatic asylum.Most senses of the word “racist” today tend to be rhetorical tricks or smears, or gross perversions of the word’s legitimate senses. What is termed “racist” often tends to be merely bigotry and prejudice against some nationality or religious group (which are not races).Or take homophobia. Back in Nazi Germany, gay people were being exterminated. Now many Western states gave them the right to be married, and there is legislation against discrimination towards gay people.
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Whether this is just Sarkeesian’s rhetoric or a throw-away comment, it actually illustrates a deep problem with the modern left.
Parts of the modern left have become a toxic mix of extreme identity politics, cultural relativism, Postmodernist nonsense, extremist Third Wave Feminism, hatred of free speech, hatred of men, and lack of interest in serious economic issues.
For such people, *everything* is racist, sexist, and homophobic – and that is practically all they can talk about. This is unhinged nonsense.
Take the issue of racism. Genuine racism, as I define it here, is at the lowest level it’s ever been. If you want to see real racism, go back to the 1890s to 1940s. Back in 1941 to 1945, there was mass genocide going on in Europe by the Nazis merely because people were the wrong race. Our world is vastly different from that lunatic asylum.
Most senses of the word “racist” today tend to be rhetorical tricks or smears, or gross perversions of the word’s legitimate senses. What is termed “racist” often tends to be merely bigotry and prejudice against some nationality or religious group (which are not races).
Or take homophobia. Back in Nazi Germany, gay people were being exterminated. Now many Western states gave them the right to be married, and there is legislation against discrimination towards gay people.
Let me be clear: genuine racism, gay rights, and women’s rights are important issues. But they have been taken to ludicrous extremes, and so much so that the cultural left now has to invent an endless stream of fake or imaginary racists, homophobes, and sexists to scream at, because identity politicians is all these people have.
The result? It is now “racist” to wear a sombrero, and even liking and eating ethnic food could be proof that you are an evil racist guilty of cultural appropriation.
Third Wave Feminism, while it might have some useful things to say here and there, has turned into a toxic enterprise of man-hating, especially hatred of white heterosexual men. Third Wave Feminists essentially spin propaganda about the gender pay gap or the conspiracy theory that we in the West live in an evil white male patriarchy.
Again, let me be clear: I think First Wave and Second Wave feminists were heroines, who mostly had real issues and important things to say – the First Wave feminists especially because they had to fight for the right to vote.
But Third Wave Feminists have mostly missed the boat, and their ideology comes right out of Postmodernism in many ways. We can prove this by the simple fact that they have virtually nothing to say about the highly patriarchal cultures in the Middle East where women are genuinely oppressed. In Saudi Arabia, for example, it is illegal for women to drive cars and this is a crime tantamount to terrorism.
As far as I am concerned, here is a real and courageous feminist in the video below. She is a Swedish women called Mona Walter.
What is a scandal is that she has to go to right-wing media to tell her story. Why isn’t the left-wing media interested in her? And where are all the Third Wave Feminists?