Tag: leftist fundamentalism
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“I am 69 years old. I will never not be a racist.”: Reflections from a South African Expatriate
I am a racist. I grew up white in apartheid South Africa. My neighborhood, buses, trains, movie theaters, restaurants, schools, beaches were all strictly segregated. Even park benches were marked “Whites Only.” People of color were known as “Non-Europeans.” Non-Europeans built and cleaned and maintained my buses, trains, movie theaters, restaurants, schools, beaches, park benches.…
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No Safe Spaces: A Poem by Fred Dodsworth
Standing midst the flames like wolves’ tongues surrounded by shattered lives, the sun sets in the East this time, a dark orange pallor casting its sickly shadow over dreams once offered. “It’s a republic if you can keep it…”
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The Gotcha Game
There’s a game radicals, progressives, and liberals like to play. We are always looking for the turncoat in our midst. Did you catch someone confusing transsexual with transgender? Five points for you. Someone ignorantly, but not sarcastically, asks “what’s wrong with the phrase All Lives Matter,” 10 points for you. Sexist blonde joke? 4 points.
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Replacing Pavement with Gardens: Beyond Leftist Fundamentalism
It is early autumn and helicopters are circling the UC Berkeley campus as I write this. I can see them from my window. The tut-tut-tut of their propellers punctuate my thoughts. A few days ago, I rode my bike up to the university to use the library, and had to navigate through a swarm of…
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Moral Panic Attack: Callout Culture and Community
Moral panic is a sociological phenomena in which individuals or groups are persecuted within a larger social group. These panics are precipitated by the presence of several key ingredients: social order, fear of that social order being threatened, and the existence of taboos—unnameable things which members of the group cannot address without experiencing fear.