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With ‘Operation Raise the Colours’ adding fuel to yet another round of the so called ‘culture wars’, I realise that at some point, I’m going to have to write some kind of commentary about it. The issues raised in the debate about Union Jacks and St. George’s flags being erected and also, being painted onto various surfaces, are certainly raising passions, that’s for sure! The debate around these issues isn’t going to go away any time soon, so with my politically homeless hat on, at some point in the next week I’ll be writing down some thoughts on what’s going on. I’ve had a trawl through the archives to see what I’ve written about the ‘culture wars’ in the past, and found the piece reproduced below. It was first published on the now archived The Stirrer blog in October 2020 – that feels like a long time ago! I hope it will give you some insights into my thinking about the issues raised and also, the need for some kind of nuance in the discussion. I’ve made a few edits and cut out a few paragraphs that are no longer relevant but, overall, I stand by what I’ve written in this article. A culture war is a cultural conflict between social groups and the struggle for dominance of their values, beliefs, and practices.[1] It commonly refers to topics on which there is general societal disagreement and polarization in societal values is seen. The term is commonly used to describe contemporary politics in the United States,[2] with issues such as abortion, homosexuality, transgender rights, pornography, multiculturalism, racial viewpoints and other cultural conflicts based on values, morality, and lifestyle being described as the major political cleavage.[2] Culture war – Wikipedia When I hear the term ‘culture wars’, part of me wants to switch off from the conversation there and then. This is not because I think the issues listed in the definition above are not important – for those suffering from prejudice and discrimination on top of precarity and poverty, they are only too all consuming and traumatic. The reason I want to switch off is the way the discussion about these issues is increasingly divorced from the issue of class and the material oppression that’s a feature of capitalism. Elements right across the political spectrum are guilty of making this separation. ‘Culture wars’ is one of those amorphous terms that means different things to different people, depending on what their political agenda is. When a political term becomes as loaded yet difficult to pin down as ‘culture wars’ has, it’s time to question its usage. Obviously, the range of issues it covers do need to be addressed but using more precise, less loaded and manipulatable terms. According to some commentators, the latest round of culture wars here in the UK was sparked by the toppling of the statue of the slave trader, Edward Colston, after a Black Lives Matter protest in Bristol on 7 June 2020: BLM protesters topple statue of Bristol slave trader Edward Colston. This is a bit of a superficial assumption to say the least. Colston’s statue was most definitely a divisive issue in Bristol, a city I’ve visited on a fair few occasions and one that from my assessment, still has some pretty serious issues regarding racial cohesion. Other issues that informed the motives of the crowd that pulled down the statue is the behind the scenes influence of the likes of the Society of Merchant Venturers among others on the way Bristol is run. For a detailed examination of this, we recommend this piece from the Bristol Radical History Society: Myths within myths… Essentially, the actions on 7 June were about calling truth to power and anyone who tries to separate the elements of anti-racism and class consciousness that manifested themselves on that day is being more than a bit disingenuous to be honest. It should be pointed out that taking to the streets and general tumult is a noble, centuries old Bristolian tradition to be celebrated by anyone with a shred of class consciousness! The distraction from the real grievances which informed the actions of those who gave Colston’s statue the mudpack treatment in the harbour started pretty soon afterwards with an artist erecting a ‘statue’ that was a crude stereotype of a white working class man. It was intended as a dig at those elements in Bristol who objected to the pulling down of the statue. Suffice to say, it was made by someone who patently has had little meaningful contact with working class people. It was a crude stereotype beloved of the liberal chattering classes who make no effort to find out what the realities of working class life are before passing divisive judgements upon us. This is dealt with in the second part of this piece from the now archived South Essex Heckler blog: Classist crap. If the liberal chattering classes in London want to find out what the realities of working class life are, we suggest they take a look at the grassroots protests against the city wide imposition of ‘Low Traffic Neighbourhoods’ (LTNs). These LTNs may well benefit the residents of the gentrified terraces but they disproportionately impact the lives of working class Londoners trying to go about their daily business. The protests involve Londoners of all colours, creeds and faiths and are the most heartening display of class solidarity I’ve seen in a fair while. A whole range of cultures are represented in these protests but what unites them is dealing with the real, material consequences of the arrogance and ineptitude of Transport for London, the office of the Mayor of London and local authorities right across the capital. Culture wars no – class war, yes! The likes of Spiked! and small time actor, Lawrence Fox, are complicit in making sure the term ‘culture wars’ is frequently featuring in the headlines and forming a growing part of what passes for political discussion. The opportunist contrarians at Spiked! can sometimes hit the nail on the head in the same way that a stopped clock is right two times a day. However, incessantly banging on about their interpretation of culture wars is just point scoring for the sake of it without a real, material political objective to aim for. Point scoring may be fine for both sides of the culture wars debate, but for those of us trying to deal with the shite of everyday life in a failing system, it’s a distraction we can do without. This may just be my personal and possibly imperfect take, but I get the distinct impression that it’s elements towards the right of the political spectrum who tend to use the term culture wars the most. Could this be because they’re trying to alter the terms of debate on class conflict, racism and how the two are more often than not, inextricably intertwined? Namely that they’re studiously trying to ignore the class divisions they’re exacerbating while sticking the blame for rising social tensions on different groups unable to ‘get on’ with each other because of ‘clashing cultural values’. Classic divide and rule tactics. Lawrence Fox has launched a new political party, provisionally called Reclaim, to “reclaim” British values from politicians, who he says have “lost touch with the people”: Laurence Fox launching political party to ‘reclaim’ British values. Fox burst into the debate with his assertion that there were no more barriers for BAME people getting into the arts than there were for Oxbridge educated white people. The assertion was wilfully ignorant in that it totally ignored the working class background of a fair few BAME people and the structural disadvantages that brings about for them in any ambitions to break into the arts. It certainly glossed over the fact that there’s less opportunities for working class people of any background, white or BAME, to get a foothold in the arts compared to the 1960s when it felt like a lot of doors were starting to open. Fox pretty much ignored the class issue which understandably suits the agenda of someone seeking to preserve their privileged status, even if they seem to be oblivious to it. Having said this, genuine grassroots working class culture will always find a way regardless of what’s thrown at us. It has done for centuries and it has always been suppressed in one way or another because of the challenge it presented to the ruling elite. A couple of centuries ago it was finding its voice in folk music and seditious pamphlets, now it’s finding its voice with kids on the estates developing their own forms of music, prose and writing on wall from tags through to street art. The kind of street art you’ll see on the sea wall at Grays, not the fake hipster version you’ll see in Shoreditch! As hinted at earlier, I have a number of problems with the term ‘culture wars’. Namely that it implies differences between groups in society are based on their culture with no consideration of class conflict, let alone the material conditions applying to competing groups. Could it be the case that those using the term don’t really want to discuss the issue of class? That would explain why the right seem to love using the term ‘culture wars’ and stoking up differences based on perceptions of different cultures clashing while downplaying or ignoring the class war they’re waging on all of us. It would also explain why the more liberal elements of the left who gave up on class struggle decades ago also seem to like using the term. Having given up on any involvement in struggles to advance the interests of the working class as a whole, they prefer to police our behaviour, disciplining and admonishing us with finger wagging self righteousness. In doing so, they are alienating an increasing number of working class people who are now to all intents and purposes, politically homeless. That is creating a potentially dangerous political vacuum. I’m beginning to think that like ‘identity politics’, ‘culture wars’ is one of those definitions that mean different things to different people. On the one hand, terms such as intersectionality and privilege theory describe fairly well defined concepts and analytical tools. When we use those terms, there’s little doubt about what’s being discussed. Granted I wouldn’t use those terms when writing for the Heckler – I would be looking to use more accessible forms of language. However, for the purposes of theoretical discussion, they definitely have a place. On the other hand, as ‘identity politics’ and ‘culture wars’ are so amorphous with their meaning very much depending on who is using those terms, in my view, they are not useful terms to use. Should we as anarchists even be using the term ‘culture wars’? Are we not better off asking those using it, regardless of where they are on the political spectrum, exactly what they mean when they use the term and pull them up for taking class conflict right out of the equation? Should the discussion around ‘culture wars’ intensify, then despite what I’ve written above, I will feel obliged to engage with it again. However, I sincerely hope that isn’t going to be the case. To conclude, as ever, constructive criticism and comradely debate around the issues raised in this piece are always welcomed. Abuse and snarky comments are not welcome. |
Thursday, August 28, 2025
"Culture Wars" by The Stirrer
Friday, April 5, 2024
"An Orwellian Felony: In Scotland Seven Years’ Imprisonment for 'Misgendering'" by Michael Hoffman
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Source: The Unz Review
“Reality is that which doesn’t go away when you stop believing in it.”
—Philip K. Dick
Scotland’s newly minted Hate Crime and Public Order Act makes it a felony to “stir up hatred” relating to age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being “intersex.” The maximum punishment is seven years’ imprisonment. Scotland’s Prime Minister Humza Yousaf said the law was designed to deal with what he called a “rising tide of hatred” in society.
“Forced to deny the evidence”
In response to the new Scottish hate crime law coming into force on 1 April, J.K. Rowling, the lady author of the “Harry Potter” books, posted a statement of fundamental truths:
“In passing the Scottish Hate Crime Act, Scottish lawmakers seem to have placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls…. For several years now, Scottish women have been pressured by their government and members of the police force to deny the evidence of their eyes and ears, repudiate biological facts and embrace a neo-religious concept of gender that is unprovable and untestable…
“The new legislation is wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women’s and girls’ single-sex spaces, the nonsense made of crime data if violent and sexual assaults committed by men are recorded as female crimes, the grotesque unfairness of allowing males to compete in female sports, the injustice of women’s jobs, honors and opportunities being taken by trans-identified men, and the reality and immutability of biological sex…
“The re-definition of ‘woman’ to include every man who declares himself one has already had serious consequences for women’s and girls’ rights and safety in Scotland, with the strongest impact felt, as ever, by the most vulnerable, including female prisoners and rape survivors.”
Rowling declared that “freedom of speech and belief” was at an end if accurate descriptions of biological sex was outlawed.
“…if what I’ve written here qualifies as an offense under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment,” Rowling said.” She added the Twitter hashtag “#ArrestMe.”
The “Hate Crime” of “Misgendering”
Siobhian Brown, Scotland’s Minister for Victims and Community Safety, told The Daily Telegraph that calling a transgender woman “he,” instead of by the pronouns which align with their gender identity, could be considered a criminal offense.
On BBC radio Brown averred that while Scotland’s government supported “everybody’s freedom for expression,” it was not acceptable that people “in our society should live in fear or be made to feel like they don’t belong.” She added that Rowling was “not entitled to make people feel uncomfortable and to misgender someone.”
India Willoughby, Britain’s first transgender broadcaster and one of the ten men listed by Rowling, reported the author to British law enforcement for “misgendering” on social media. Willoughby, a co-host of England’s ITV network program “Loose Women,” revealed in an interview with Byline TV that Willoughby “reported J.K. Rowling to the police for what she said.”
The “Loose Women” co-host’s name was brought up on March 5, after another social media user shared one of Rowling’s posts on X, formerly Twitter. Rowling wrote, “India didn’t become a woman. India is cosplaying a misogynistic male fantasy of what a woman is.”
Willoughby replied, “For J.K. Rowling to deliberately misgender me knowing who I am is grossly offensive. It is a hate crime. I don’t know if (the police report is) going to be treated as a hate crime, malicious communications, but it’s a cut-and-dried offense, as far as I’m concerned,” she said.
Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said the United Kingdom had a proud tradition of free speech and that Scotland’s new law had given the police the wrong priorities. “We should not be criminalizing people saying common sense things about biological sex,” he told reporters. “Clearly that isn’t right.”
The cant by Scottish government officials about supporting “everybody’s freedom of expression,” is the window dressing that accompanies almost every draconian limitation on freedom of expression. It contains a loophole the size of the Grand Canyon: entitled categories of people should not be offended “or be made to feel like they don’t belong,” consequently those who believe that a man, defined scientifically as possessing xy chromosomes, is not a woman—given that a woman has xx chromosomes—forfeit their human right to speech and press because the biological truth they express offends those engaged in a masquerade enforced by the police power of the state.
US Government Heading in a Similar Direction as Scotland
Whether the US government will eventually enforce this imposture through “civil rights” legislation (the “Equality Act”) remains to be seen. The papally-labeled “good Catholic” Joe Biden took an incremental step in that direction when he declared the day on which western civilization commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ (“Easter”), as “Transgender Day.” The president claimed that the “discrimination that transgender Americans face is worsening our nation’s mental health crisis.” In other words, a man pretending he is a woman is not itself a mental health issue; it is the “discrimination” he faces from those who insist on upholding the reality of biology that is the root cause of his woes.
President Biden spoke against attempts to protect children from physicians engaged in the lucrative practice of chemically and surgically maiming them to facilitate their alleged transition to the opposite sex. Mr. Biden also alluded to granting men who say they are women passports that will categorize them as female (“We are making public services more accessible for transgender Americans, including with more inclusive passports”).
Biden’s Equality Act, if passed by Congress, requires the Department of Justice to “intervene” to ensure a man who says he is a woman will not be “denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room.” A biological woman’s right to women-only spaces will become a matter for prosecution by the awesome law enforcement machinery of the Federal government.
The Abridgment of Freedom of Speech in Historical Context
British Prime Minister Sunak’s observation is welcome, however like almost all discussions of freedom of speech and press in the United Kingdom, the history of the gradual curtailment of free expression is omitted. The attack on freedom of inquiry and expression was exacerbated in the modern era in England in 1994, when an elderly English aristocrat, 81-year-old Dowager Lady Jane Birdwood, was sentenced in London to three months in prison for publishing a pamphlet, The Longest Hatred, critical of the Babylonian Talmud. (Due to her age the sentence was suspended. She lost a substantial portion of her life savings in mounting her legal defense). The law under which Lady Birdwood was prosecuted was a precursor to the repression we see emerging in Scotland.
Again in England, this time in 2009, Simon Shepard was sentenced to 4 years and ten months imprisonment and Stephen Whittle to two years and ten months for distributing a comic book which satirized the World War II era homicidal gas chamber narrative. Shepard served nearly four years before being paroled. Whittle received parole after two years.
Adil Khan, then of head of Britain’s local “diversity and community cohesion” bureau, described the successful prosecution as groundbreaking. Indeed it was, and one searches in vain to find Sheppard, Whittle or Birdwood in any list of martyrs to the cause of freedom of expression. They have been censored even from the rolls of the censored.
There is a link between the precedent of making it a criminal offense to publish critical scrutiny of the Talmud or a lampoon of Allied World War II history, and forbidding articulation of biological reality in Scotland. Without providing this context we can’t know how Scotland arrived at the point at which it is now. The controversy is made to appear as though it arose from Erewhon, and that in general the United Kingdom guarantees freedom of speech, which it does not.
Moreover, in corporate America lobbyists for the curtailment of free expression such as the powerful pressure group GLAAD, have worked overtime to ensure that large corporations, fearful of “reputational damage,” enforce the Orwellian thought crime of “misgendering” on their work force, and any social or other media they control. In a press release from USA-based GLAAD (“the world’s largest Transgender media advocacy organization’), we read:
“The practice of targeted misgendering…has been identified by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and other civil society groups, including GLAAD and Media Matters, as a form of hate speech.
“Social media companies committed to maintaining safe environments for trans and nonbinary people should be able to recognize targeted harassing and abusive behavior directed at them as harassment and abuse, and should enforce their policies accordingly…GLAAD urge(s) all (social media) platforms to incorporate into their hateful conduct policies an explicit prohibition against targeted misgendering…of transgender and nonbinary people. This recommendation remains an especially high priority in our current landscape where anti-trans online rhetoric…are so prevalent, vicious, and harmful — and where we also see such an offline onslaught targeting the trans community…” (end quote, italics supplied).
Selective Enforcement Leads to the Establishment of a New Royalty
Society must necessarily make exceptions to free speech in cases of child pornography and clear and blatant advocacy of violence. Any other censorship invariably leads to selective enforcement, “Free speech for me, but not for thee.”
There are no prosecutions in the United Kingdom or the U.S. for criticizing the Gospel of Matthew and John, for publishing hatred of Germans and Palestinians, or for attacks on mothers of large families.
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s much admired 1996 book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners, argues that the German people in general have a genetic predisposition toward killing Jews. The British and American corporate world had no qualms about profiting hugely from Goldhagen’s book of prejudice and bigotry and promoting it in schools. (Goldhagen’s hate was demolished in 1998 by Norman Finkelstein and Ruth Bettina Birn in A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth).
Lee Child is the wealthy, best-selling author of dozens of “Jack Reacher” novels which have been made into movies. In his 2009 book One Shot (Dell Mass Market Edition, page 203), we read, “Vladimir was different. Vladimir was very tall and heavy and blonde. Unbelievably strong. It was entirely possible that Vladimir had German genes somewhere in his background. Perhaps his grandmother had picked them up back in 1941, like germs.”
Mr. Child’s racial smear of the German people has been no obstacle to his spectacular success as a literary phenomenon. It’s simply not an issue.
In October, 2009 the celebrated television producer, writer and comedian Larry David (creator of “Seinfeld”), on his HBO television show “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” is depicted entering a bathroom in his female assistant’s home, where he splatters urine on a portrait of Jesus. Instead of wiping the urine off the portrait, Mr. David exits the restroom. Minutes later David’s assistant enters, spots the urine-splattered image of the Christian savior and mistakes the urine for divine tears. Reaching the conclusion that Jesus is weeping, she summons her mother to the bathroom, where both women kneel in prayer.
Since Larry David performed his disgusting insult to Christians his power and stature in Hollywood and the media have done nothing but increase. The memory of his pornographic disrespect has evaporated into the rarefied air of the United States of Amnesia. We are expected to relax. We are ordered to believe his act does not constitute hate. It was all in fun. If it makes believers “afraid” or “offended,” too bad. Grow up, Christians. Get over it.
This laid-back, go-with-the-flow admonition is absent from the System-approved outrage that greets irreverence towards protected categories which are deemed sacrosanct, and about which no light-hearted dismissal can be countenanced by those who value their reputation.
In 2020 on Twitter social media, radical journalist Lauren Hough hurled a revolting, vile insult at Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, opining that the mother of seven has a “clown car vagina.” Of course Hough, like Goldhagen, Child, David and a legion of other Establishment-approved haters, is in good standing in the world of corporate social media. Canceling her would be “an egregious act of Far Right censorship.”
Hate laws are tailored to render supreme certain categories of entitled humans, and subjugate those who are not entitled. Even mild dissent constitutes the thought crime of “anti-trans rhetoric, prevalent, vicious, and harmful.” We are witnessing a revival of the Old World, two-tiered tyranny which institutionalizes a royalty/peasant divide, representing the aristocracy which the Founders of our nation adamantly opposed.
The Kingdom of Make Believe
Increasingly a make-believe world is being legislated where it is a felony to shout that the emperor has no clothes.
The line between fantasy and reality is fraying. The advancement of knowledge has become hostage to fanatical wokery. Our unshadowed, God-given, inalienable right of freely speaking, printing, writing and associating as we choose, is fading under the onslaught of an extremist, supremacist sexual revolution which insists on absolute domination over those who adhere to thousands of years of natural law founded on ineradicable biological facts.
To ensure that this supremacy is enforced it is falsely claimed that those who cannot ignore biology and will not deny women the freedom to associate with women alone, are hateful toward persons confused about their sexual identity. On the contrary, it is from a profound compassion toward those trans persons, whose inherent human dignity we respect—that we uphold, in the face of threats of all kinds, including cancellation online—chromosomal reality, the refusal of which is a principal source of their suffering.
This is not only a matter of the struggle for freedom of free speech. It’s a blatant shout-out, a red flag, a proclamation in garish neon that the leaders of the West, who sanctimoniously lecture China and Russia about their solemn obligation to protect freedom of thought, are intellectually enfeebled. We have no obligation to obey or consent to the ideology of those who are transparently non compos mentis. We are not duty bound to follow them into derangement under color of law, or the supposed obligations of citizenship.
We inhabit a western world where if I insist I’m Napoleon and you “deliberately misidentify” me as Franco, “knowing” I am Napoleon, then “it is grossly offensive. It is a hate crime.”
Should this institutionalization of dictatorial narcissism accelerate, the epitaph inscribed on our tombstone will read, “Here lies 3,000 years of Mosaic-Christian civilization extinguished by the kingdom of make believe.”