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Americans tune in to 'cancel culture' — and don't like what they see

Ryan Lizza
Politico
Wed, 22 Jul 2020 16:39 UTC
Trump Fourth of July speech at Mount Rushmore
© Alex Brandon/AP Photo
Supporters listen to President Donald Trump deliver a Fourth of July speech at Mount Rushmore during which he decried cancel culture as a political weapon of the left.
One of the few things that Barack Obama and Donald Trump agree on is cancel culture.

In the last year, as numerous public figures have become the targets of online campaigns by social media swarms, the former and current president have spoken out against the practice. "That's not activism," Obama said last November. "That's not bringing about change. If all you're doing is casting stones, you're probably not going to get that far. That's easy to do."

In a Fourth of July speech at Mount Rushmore, Trump said, "We want free and open debate, not speech codes and cancel culture. We embrace tolerance, not prejudice." Speaking of the left, he added that "one of their political weapons is 'cancel culture' — driving people from their jobs, shaming dissenters, and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees. This is the very definition of totalitarianism, and it is completely alien to our culture and our values, and it has absolutely no place in the United States of America." (One commentator quickly pointed out that Trump has long been one of the most enthusiastic practitioners of cancel culture.)

We were curious how much this debate over cancel culture — which has quickly morphed from a Twitter obsession for elite journalists to a campaign rallying cry for Trump — has permeated the public consciousness. We asked our polling partner, Morning Consult, to field some questions in our weekly survey and one surprising finding is the number of Americans who now agree with Obama and Trump and want to cancel cancel culture — or at least its worst aspects.
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Sheeple

Twitter ban of QAnon conspiracy theorists only makes them stronger, & the censorship won't stop there

Helen Buyniski
RT
Thu, 23 Jul 2020 17:44 UTC
trump rally qanon teeshirt
© Reuters / Leah Millis
Twitter's threat to shadowban accounts and hashtags linked to the pro-Trump 'QAnon' psy-op has merely validated followers' persecution complex and brought them attention - while putting others who buck the establishment on notice.

When the social media giant announced it was "cracking down" on QAnon on Tuesday, barring Q-related topics from trending, blocking URLs associated with the conspiracy theory (really an ecosystem of interlinked conspiracy theories, centered around the cryptic disclosures of a supposedly high-ranking government employee going by the moniker Q), and banning Q-promoting accounts that have violated other Twitter rules, it gave QAnon followers the validation they craved.

Comment:

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Bad Guys

Geraldo Rivera: Trump 'brave' for sending good wishes to accused sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell

Graig Graziosi
The Independent
Wed, 22 Jul 2020 17:21 UTC
Geraldo Rivera
© Theo Wargo/Getty Images
Geraldo Rivera
'For this judge to chicken out and not give this defendant bail, I think is copping out to the mob,' Mr Rivera said.

Fox News contributor Geraldo Rivera defended Donald Trump's well-wishes to alleged child sex trafficker and Jeffery Epstein confidante Ghislaine Maxwell on Twitter Wednesday.

During Mr Trump's coronavirus press briefing on Tuesday, he was asked about Ms Maxwell and offered his sympathies to her.

"I don't know, I haven't really been following it too much," Mr Trump said. "I just wish her well, frankly."

Mr Trump went on to say he'd met her numerous times over the years, especially when he was living in Palm Beach, Florida.

"But I wish her well, whatever it is," Mr Trump said.

Ms Maxwell is facing federal charges for allegedly helping Epstein recruit and sexually abuse girls.

Comment: Rivera is right, in that Maxwell is entitled to presumption of innocence and a fair trial. Unfortunately for Ms. Maxwell, the mountain of evidence against her is going to make that a difficult proposition. She has been named by too many of Epstein's victims as the one who lured them into danger.

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X

Red Bull is right: Standing up to racism doesn't mean you have to pander to the woke mob

Micah Curtis
RT
Thu, 23 Jul 2020 16:56 UTC
racist map

'Racist' map.
The CEOs who leaked a "racist" map used at an internal Red Bull presentation have been fired. Quite right, too. While the map was wrong, people don't want woke politics forced down their throat.

Back in February, a "racist" slide at a Red Bull company presentation was leaked to the public. There was a long silence over the matter, until recently when it was revealed that the executive responsible had been fired.

However, in an interesting twist, it looks like Red Bull has fired a pair of senior woke employees. As in two of its CEOs. Aside from being the ones who leaked the image to the press, they've been pushing for more diversity in the company. Austrian leadership showed little interest.

Let's be honest about something: this may be one of the smartest business moves that a company has made in years. It's not exactly a massive revelation that racism is an evil thing that everyone hates. Well, except people who are actually racist, but I wouldn't describe them as rational members of society. But the biggest detriment to business in the modern day isn't "racist" maps. It's woke politics that no one is interested in.

When Gillette released its 'The Best Men Can Be' ad, there was massive backlash and the company lost billions of dollars. It later said it's "worth it." I have a feeling any employees who lost money over that bungle don't share the same sentiment.

Marvel Comics has continuously pandered to the woke, and lost massive sales. Captain America, written by America-hating Ta-Nehisi Coates, can't even ship 30,000 comics. For the uninitiated, those are abysmal numbers for such a popular character. EA Games' Battlefield series suffered substantial losses because of similar pushing of woke politics.

Comment: What a concept! If woke employees and CEOs are destroying a business from within, fire them.

One of the ironies of this situation is that the allegedly racist map was actually poking fun at American exceptionalism and ignorance.

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Pistol

St. Louis prosecutor's office busted altering evidence; reassembled non-operable McCloskey pistol to classify as lethal


Zero Hedge
Thu, 23 Jul 2020 16:49 UTC
McCloskey
© Reuters / Lawrence Bryant
Patricia McCloskey and her husband Mark aim guns at protesters as they enter their gated community during a demonstration against St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson.
The pistol Patricia McCloskey waved at protesters who broke down a gate to trespass on their private street was a non-operable 'prop' used during a lawsuit they were involved in, so a member of Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner's staff ordered the crime lab to disassemble and reassemble the gun - allowing them to classify it as "capable of lethal use" in charging documents filed Monday, according to KSDK5.
In Missouri, police and prosecutors must prove that a weapon is "readily" capable of lethal use when it is used in the type of crime with which the McCloskeys have been charged.

Assistant Circuit Attorney Chris Hinckley ordered crime lab staff members to field strip the handgun and found it had been assembled incorrectly. Specifically, the firing pin spring was put in front of the firing pin, which was backward, and made the gun incapable of firing, according to documents obtained by 5 On Your Side.

Firearms experts then put the gun back together in the correct order and test-fired it, finding that it worked, according to the documents. -KSDK5
According to the report, crime lab workers photographed the disassembly and reassembly of the pistol.

The McCloskeys attorney, Joel Schwartz, told KSDK that the St. Louis couple intentionally misplaced the firing pin on the gun, rendering it inoperable. They turned the pistol in to their former attorney Al Watkins following the incident last month.

Comment: The woke mob demands total obedience. Anything less and you must be destroyed. See also:

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Handcuffs

Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and 4 others arrested in $60 million bribery case


CBS News
Wed, 22 Jul 2020 08:53 UTC
Larry Householder
© John Minchillo/AP
Ohio State Representative Larry Householder (R), of District 72, stands at the head of a legislative session as Speaker of the House, in Columbus.
The powerful Republican speaker of the Ohio House and four associates were arrested Tuesday in a $60 million federal bribery case connected to a taxpayer-funded bailout of Ohio's two nuclear power plants. Hours after FBI agents raided Speaker Larry Householder's farm, U.S. Attorney David DeVillers described the ploy as "likely the largest bribery scheme ever perpetrated against the state of Ohio."

Householder was one of the driving forces behind the nuclear plants' financial rescue, which added a new fee to every electricity bill in the state and directed over $150 million a year through 2026 to the plants near Cleveland and Toledo. After Householder's arrest, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine called on him to resign.


Comment: One wonders how much of these investigations and charges (even if they are valid) were motivated by party politics and the fact that Ohio is a swing state with an important influence over how the upcoming presidential election goes.

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Book

Rutgers English Department to deemphasize traditional grammar 'in solidarity with Black Lives Matter'

Alex Frank
The College Fix
Mon, 20 Jul 2020 00:01 UTC
blm black fist
© Vilingor / Shutterstock
Also pledges to decolonize the writing center.

The English Department at Rutgers University recently announced a list of "anti-racist" directives and initiatives for the upcoming fall and spring semesters, including an effort to deemphasize traditional grammar rules.

The initiatives were spelled out by Rebecca Walkowitz, the English Department chair at Rutgers University, and sent to faculty, staff and students in an email, a copy of which was obtained by The College Fix.

Walkowitz sent the email on "Juneteenth," which celebrates the commemoration of emancipation from slavery in the United States.

Comment: See also:

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MIB

Men's Rights attorney and advocate Marc Angelucci slain by hitman disguised as delivery driver

Corrine Barraclough
Spectator Australia
Mon, 20 Jul 2020 21:39 UTC
marc angelucci
On the Saturday before last, July 11, just before 4 pm, my dear and wonderful friend Marc Angelucci was at his home in Glenwood Drive, Cedar Pines Park, California with friends.

There was a knock at the door.

One of his friends' answered, but the delivery man said he had a package that Angelucci needed to sign for.

Marc went to the door.

Shots were fired.

A car sped away.

His friends called for help.

Paramedics arrived.

Angelucci was pronounced dead at the scene.

On a Saturday afternoon, at his own front door, formidable lawyer Marc Angelucci, 52, was murdered.

Comment: The above article was published on Monday, July 20th. Just a few hours earlier, on Sunday July 19th, a hitman disguised as a FedEx delivery driver shot dead the son of Judge Esther Salas in North Brunswick, New Jersey. Angelucci was assassinated a week earlier on July 11th. (Note one difference between the two: in Angelucci's case, the hitman specifically requested that he come to the door to sign for a package; in Salas' case, the hitman did not appear to request Esther Salas herself.)

Now the media is linking the two deaths - which obviously are linked, given the shared modus operandi - but with the somewhat spurious suggestion - based on leaks from "anonymous law enforcement officials" - that their suspect in the Salas home attack was "men's rights attorney and activist" Roy Den Hollander, that he "held a grudge" against Salas, and now, despite shared interests as "men's rights attorneys", that he also "held a grudge" against Angelucci (according to "a friend of the family").

The Atlantic has in the meantime published a synopsis of "thousands of pages written by Hollander, and uploaded in bulk to the Internet Archive." The outlet provides no links to this content, and no screenshots, so we have to trust them that this "manifesto" is indeed out there somewhere. A search of the username Atlantic provided ("Roy17den") on "the Internet Archive", by which Atlantic presumably means this site, yields no such "thousands of pages of documents.")

Granting The Atlantic the benefit of doubt by assuming that the content is indeed written by Hollander, then he did seem like a "man on a mission" to "show Feminazis what's what." More than that, some of the quotes selected by Atlantic suggests a highly unstable individual - so unstable that he claims to have "contacted my buddies at the GRU" in order to "get those Clinton emails for Trump in 2016."

If an attorney-at-law involved in some fairly high-level cases in the USA were seeking to attract the FBI's attention, the CIA's attention, the NSA's attention, and the Mueller Investigation's attention, that is precisely what he would write and publish online. And yet it never landed him in hot water. Clearly then, anything that is claimed to have been written or said by Hollander - who is now dead remember, and thus cannot contest it - must be treated as suspect.

So what are we, for now, looking at?

Three dead bodies - one the son of a judge, the other two attorneys - all ostensibly connected by men's rights issues. Look deeper though and the judge in question was 4 days into investigating Jeffrey Epstein's banking with Deutsche Bank, while the now-dead suspect in both killings has a history with a US-Israeli-linked private intelligence firm.

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Pistol

New York Post: Roy Den Hollander, the 'FedEx killer', had photos and address of NY Chief Judge Janet DiFiore in his car

Bernadette Hogan and Aaron Feis
New York Post
Thu, 23 Jul 2020 15:12 UTC
Janet DiFiore and Roy Den Hollander
© AP
Janet DiFiore and Roy Den Hollander (inset) Handout
A top New York judge may also have been in the cross hairs of "anti-feminist" lawyer Roy Den Hollander — her photo was found in the car where he killed himself, officials revealed Tuesday.

Now, Janet DiFiore, the Empire State's chief judge, is being guarded in the wake of the unnerving find, made after Den Hollander fatally shot a New Jersey federal jurist's son and wounded her husband before taking his own life, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday.

"In the car that the body was found [in], they also saw a picture of our Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, her name and her address, so I have directed the state police to provide security for our chief judge," Cuomo told reporters in a conference call.

Comment: See also:

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Stock Down

Australia faces largest economic deficit since WWII following lockdown

Jennifer Duke
Sydney Morning Herald
Thu, 23 Jul 2020 10:23 UTC
Frydenberg
© Alex Ellinghausen
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg: "We can see the mountain ahead and Australia begins to climb. We must remain strong."
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has revealed the budget will be in the red by $85.8 billion in 2019-20 and $184.5 billion in 2020-21, marking the biggest deficit since World War II due to drastic spending to mitigate the damage from the coronavirus pandemic.

At a special budget update on Thursday, the first since December, Mr Frydenberg said the unemployment rate was expected to reach 9.25 per cent in the December quarter, while GDP would contract by 0.25 per cent in 2019-20 and shrink 2.5 per cent in 2020-21.

The economic downturn has cost the budget $32.4 billion in 2019-20 and $72.2 billion in 2020-21. Tax receipts are down $31.7 billion in 2019-20 and $63.9 billion in 2020-21.

Comment: See also:

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