He doesn’t see woke as dead, arguing it will be reborn as a new beast, shorn of its western sympathies and fully in-line with Third Worldism.

[T]he second draft of wokeness seems destined to dispense with its gestures toward Western religious traditions. Indeed, its adherents reserve special contempt for all things Western: holidays, cultural expressions, moral codes. But the movement’s loudest voices seem most offended by liberalism, the theory of social organization that emerged out of the Enlightenment and on which most Western governments are founded.

The socialist movement overtaking the left, for example, proposes doing away with the Senate and the Supreme Court as conceived in the Constitution, and with them the separation of powers that has preserved liberty and stability in America for generations. Its leading lights flirt openly with the exotic allure of Maoism. At the center of it all is what one Democratic Socialist of America national committee member, Cliff Connolly, confessed was his movement’s “hatred of the Constitution.”

…

It has fetishized violence, for example, particularly against what it construes as the symbols of the dominant American political culture: its statues, its courthouses, its law enforcement officers. It is hostile toward Western conventions, particularly the religious and capitalistic varieties, just as the anarchists of the early 20th century were. Its virtues are those articulated by the Iranian revolutionary thinker Jalal Al-e-Ahmad in his radical tome Westoxification. The Iranian intellectual Ali Shariati summarized the book’s thesis as opposition to “world imperialism, including multinational corporations and cultural imperialism, racism, class exploitation, class oppression, [and] class inequality,” among other social ills allegedly cultivated and exported by the West.

Woke 2.0’s intense focus on anti-westernism, anti-colonialism, “Palestinianism,” and socialism, will apparently leave little room for sexual politics. “The sexual politics that were once so central to the movement’s self-conception are far more muted than they were at the end of the last decade,” Rothman argues.

This argument is almost entirely off the mark. Rothman’s vision of the next form of woke is too coherent and too convenient for right-wing interests. Woke 2.0 is unlikely to be a domestic Hamas or as ideological as he describes. It will incorporate many tendencies from its former self, but it’s not going to be a third world solidarity movement. Women will dictate its course and it will fixate on petty sexual politics. Look at Cornell and outrage over Shane Gillis to see a preview of the future.

There will be plenty of issues covered by Woke 2.0. The woke still care about “racial justice” and diversifying America through mass immigration and DEI. But the concerns of the past will recede before the almighty anger of women out for blood over trumped-up grievances and ordinary annoyances. The Gender War will take center stage, and make politics a whole lot more confusing.

It’s more convenient for the Right to imagine itself against a third worldist Left. Rothman’s depiction of Woke 2.0 offers a useful foil for every possible faction of the Right. For foreign policy hawks, a third worldist Left commits treason by standing with America’s enemies. For Zionists, a third worldist Left can be cast as anti-Semitic and obsessed with Israel. For free marketers, a third wordist Left is openly communist and threatening the property rights of all Americans. For identitarians, a third worldist Left is empowered by mass immigration and unapologetically seeks to erase white America.

Even those right-wingers who want to ally with the Left can find something in a third wordlist Left. Putting aside the domestic issues makes the Left attractive to the Insane Clown Party and wignats. A third worldist Left would share some of their interests. They can unite against the billionaires and fight for the common man. They may disagree about immigration, but at least they can agree about the need to impeach Trump and arrest the Epstein Class.

But a female-focused Woke isn’t convenient for the Right at all. It’s hard to create a bogeyman about women protesting “sexist” jokes and claiming they were raped over regrettable sex. Republicans depend on women to win elections; the party isn’t going to be warning about the “foid” menace and making ads about how Lindsay Clancy fans may murder their kids. Much of what Woke 2.0 will focus on will be frivolous and beyond the realm of ordinary politics.

We’re already seeing signs of what will animate the new age of woke. The only people who demonstrated against Karmelo Anthony’s guilty verdict were the most deranged black activists. America hardly experienced any street protests over the Iran War. In the past, these causes could’ve excited mass movements. Black Lives Matter was inspired by the justifiable homicides of black assailants. The latest police shootings only cause local controversy and no riots. The national media barely pays attention to them.

The Left mobilized against the Vietnam War and Iraq War, and both conflicts defined left-wing movements of their respective times. We’re only two years removed from widespread campus demonstrations over Gaza. However, we’ve seen barely any demonstrations over Iran, which undermines Rothman’s point that the next version of woke will be even more invested in solidarity with “anti-imperialist” causes. Of course, Americans care about the Iran War and don’t have a high opinion of it. But for the Left, it doesn’t inspire them to take the streets. It’s not the cause for them to organize around.

The biggest campus protest this year was in response to the Cornell 7 case. That case dominated social media discourse over the last few weeks as well. When looking at social media “protests,” issues deeply concerning to women garner far more attention than anything dealing with the third world. When Shane Gillis mocked women’s gym attire, women across the country protested by filming themselves in their skin-tight athleisure gear. This was preceded by Lindsay Clancy mania. Tens of thousands of women across their country adopted the child killer as their heroine and posted solidarity clips to support her. Clancy supporters even staged a rally for their icon outside of her court hearing. It was arguably larger than any anti-war protest this year, and Clancy herself had a bigger cultural impact than the Iranians.

These may just seem like frivolous concerns, but they relate to deeper motivations about what kind of society liberal women desire. Cornell 7, the gym clothing protests, and Lindsay Clancy all center on how women demand society adjust to their whims and protect them from consequences. Despite having more power and freedom than ever before, women seem remarkably aggrieved. Polls show young women have particular animosity towards men and blame them for society’s problems. This gives them grounds to feel oppressed and demand change.

Don’t expect the new version of woke to offer much intellectual depth or ideological coherence. You won’t see any Ibram X. Kendis emerge to explain to the masses. But it will be a deeply-felt sentiment that the Left will cater to.

There are already plenty of examples. Democratic politicians rushed to exploit the Cornell 7 allegations and vowed to make sweeping changes to sexual consent laws in response. Many liberals want to ban fraternities entirely over the case, which will likely be a cause to gain more support in the near-future. Several cities are expanding their civil rights protections to cover dubious “sexual orientations” that an increasing number of women identify with. Now a woman can expect even greater privileges if she identifies as polyamorous or pansexual.

This does make things complicated for the Left. Politicians can’t legislate that boyfriends be better and that no man takes a gander at women at the gym. They’re not gonna propose reparations for women going on shitty dates. But it’s a sentiment they have to cater to–and bow before. A number of Democratic politicians have been cancelled over questionable MeToo claims. Most famously, Graham Platner, who embodied the kind of woke Rothman thinks is the future, had to drop out of his Senate race because of a questionable claim of sexual assault, along with other women claiming he was a bad boyfriend. Mandela Barnes, once the establishment favorite in the Wisconsin gubernatorial race, dropped out after he was accused of hitting on women at the office.

MeToo is a powerful force on the Left, and no Democrat can ignore it. Its dominance reminds the party of who’s driving the new version of woke.

The female-led Woke 2.0 won’t force the Left to forget about systemic racism and the evils of colonialism. These will still be matters of concern for leftists. Democrats will still have to cater to the various protected classes that make up their coalition, including entertaining reparations and promising to end deportations. The old aspects of woke will still be around.

But the new version will not be the coherent, third wordist movement imagined by Rothman. You will not see solidarity protests in support of Iran, Venezuela, or Cuba. You will not see serious discussions of eliminating the US empire in favor of anti-imperialist China. Woke 2.0 will largely be okay with American Empire. It will just want to make the empire more woke and more feminine.

The third worldist focus would be a distraction from what really matters to the activists: legislating against the male gaze.

Order Scott Greer’s new book, “Whitepill: The Online Right and the Making of Trump’s America,” from this link.

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This benign comment drew equal amounts of support and criticism. The critics allege that all art is political and it’s imperative for entertainers to speak out on injustice. Some of outraged argued that metal itself is political, with one academic claiming the genre is about “speaking to the marginalized, speaking truth to power, liberation.”

In other words, metal is inherently left-wing.

It’s necessary to set the record straight on the actual politics of metal. Metal isn’t inherently left or right-wing–it’s traditionally apolitical. Over the last two decades, Antifa music journalists and Redditors have tried to make the genre more politically correct to suit their interests. They’ve pushed some big artists to make libtarded statements and promoted explicitly left-wing bands. In spite of all these efforts, these journos haven’t changed metal’s nature.

It’s not productive to treat art like a Stalinist commissar and put everything in clear political categories. That’s not how art works. Obviously, some art is explicitly political, something metal rarely is. But if one were forced to place it on a political compass, metal would clearly lean right. Its rebellious themes and tendency to denounce religion would not make metal traditionally conservative. But it’s ultimately a style centered on fantasy (a literary genre long-associated with the right) and extols masculinity. It’s overwhelmingly white. Western history and mythology serve as major lyrical inspirations. One could even say it’s a heroic style as it imagines the world as a grim place where you must fight to survive. That’s a worldview shared by many right-wingers. Like the best right-wing art, it puts the art first, not politics. Even the few openly right-wing metal bands don’t write about politics. Their views come through their songs on history and fantasy.

It’s not quite accurate to say metal is right-wing, but it’s more accurate than leftists trying to claim it as their own. A largely apolitical genre primarily centered on myth and violent masculinity isn’t a left-wing thing.

Here’s a brief history lesson on metal. Metal was invented by Black Sabbath. Other rock bands influenced the genre, but Sabbath created it. Sabbath had a few political songs, such as the anti-war anthem “War Pigs.” But most of their songs were about personal struggles, drugs, damnation, and horror. With Ronnie James Dio as singer, fantasy became the primary lyrical theme. Sabbath had a much darker view of the world than their peers. They weren’t celebrating parties, girls, or taking it easy. They wrote a lot more about love and relationships than their successors in the genre, but far less about this topic than their peers.

The next generation of metal would follow in Sabbath’s footsteps, but focus even more on fantasy. Bands that aimed for radio play, such as Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard, were an exception. But most of the genre differentiated itself by not singing or shouting about their breakups. Iron Maiden has several songs dedicated to various moments in history along with material based on literature and mythology. Other bands, such as Venom and Mercyful Fate, fixated on the occult and horror. Thrash metal bands added general violence as a primary theme, which could range from songs about getting eaten by piranhas to rampaging metal militias.

Lyrics aside, metal music wasn’t made for the sensitive. It was loud, fast, aggressive, and full of testosterone. It also began stripping away rock’s blues roots, making it a “whiter” genre. (Various forms of electronic music and alternative rock were also dropping the blues, but in a different manner from metal.) The Religious Right was eager to ban heavy metal, but it wasn’t because they felt it was leftist. The preachers claimed the music was indecent and possibly Satanic.

There was another genre emerging in the 70s and 80s that also featured angry white guys playing loud and fast music. Punk and metal have similarities and there’s been plenty of cross-pollination between both genres. But punks traditionally took a dim view of metal. As one can read in old interviews and books such as American Hardcore, punks saw metal as backward and reactionary. The genre’s lack of politics was a mark against it. It’s a point repeated throughout this documentary on grindcore. Grindcore artists lambast metal guys for focusing solely on the music while they claim punks care more about the politics. (This is a curious position for grindcore-ers to take when their growled vocals make the lyrics indecipherable.)

Punk and hardcore had a huge influence on metal. Many subgenres would not exist without that influence. For a number of bands, punk didn’t just shape their music–it also shaped their lyrics. As the 80s progressed, most thrash bands ditched songs about metal, the joy of violence, and the occult to shout about social and political issues. The usual political message of thrash songs amounted to “the world is messed up” and “the government sucks.” Many political persuasions agree with these statements. A number of popular thrash bands–such as Megadeth, Slayer, and Overkill–included vocal conservatives as members. It’s likely James Hetfield himself is a conservative. But there were bands who intended for their music to be explicitly left-wing. Kreator, Sacred Reich, Nuclear Assault, Anthrax, and Sepultura are some prominent examples. This political tendency would be carried on by later acts, particularly within metalcore and a few death metal bands.

But most subgenres eschewed politics in favor of the typical metal topics. It’s hard to see death metal, black metal, power metal, and doom metal as protest genres. Politics has always remained a marginal focus in the genre. Napalm Death is an outlier, not the norm.

There was a brief period in the early 90s when a number of major metal bands made right-wing public statements. Pantera, Slayer, Danzig, Type O Negative, and Morbid Angel all had controversies for being politically incorrect about race. It would make this article extremely long to explain each situation, so I’ll just focus on Pantera. They were arguably the biggest metal band of the early 90s after Metallica. Pantera were proud southerners who loved Confederate imagery and presenting themselves as hillbillies. Their lyrics had little to do with politics outside of hating the media. But their frontman Phil Anselmo was a forerunner of rock artists delivering political diatribes on stage, but his speeches were very different from the Trump bashing of today.

Anselmo once gave a speech attacking rap “pissing all over white culture,” how blacks seem to be okay with killing whites, how Pantera’s music is a white thing, and how whites should have pride in who they are.

The “white pride” trend seemed to die with the advent of nu-metal. That shouldn’t be surprising as nu-metal was a “multicultural” version of metal.

These controversies shouldn’t be taken as evidence that metal was explicitly right-wing. The public statements had little to do with the lyrics and focus of such bands. Pantera, Slayer, and Morbid Angel were not the right-wing version of crust punk bands that put their politics first. These artists just occasionally expressed their personal views on stage, in interviews, and occasionally in a few songs. You can listen to these bands and never be aware they leaned politically. In contrast, lefty metal bands and punk acts typically make their politics integral to the music. You have to be pretty dense to not get the point of Crass.

Right-wing acts still stick to the music. This is especially true in that notorious subgenre known as “National Socialist Black Metal” (NSBM). This is a label very few artists embrace. Many bands lumped into it insist they’re not Nazis or not even political. Burzum, the most popular “NSBM” artist, has zero political lyrics; the label owes entirely to Varg Vikernes’s personal statements outside of his music. NSBM and regular black metal typically have the same lyrical themes. Both deal with dark fantasy, hostility to Christianity, ancient mythology, and forbidding landscapes. But in NSBM there are hardly any references to Satan, more allusions to Wotan, less suicidal ideation, and a greater chance the screamed lyrics are about the glories of whiteness. You’re not going to get songs about why we need less immigration, how a certain political leader sucks, or anything dealing with current affairs. NSBM resides in the land of myth as much as ordinary black metal. This is not a genre ideal for protest songs, with its shrieking vocals, lo-fi production, and gloomy atmosphere. Even if its political variant isn’t anywhere near as political as anarcho-punk.

To reiterate, it’s inaccurate to think of metal as inherently right-wing. But it’s certainly not left-wing either.

It can stand as a model for the type of culture right-wingers should celebrate and try to create. It eschews the mundanity of ordinary life for a world of myth and legend. A lot of those myths and legends aren’t so nice. I’m not sure the Right would like the nightmarish world conjured up by Autopsy and Cannibal Corpse. But the world we live in isn’t so fair and decent. It’s a dark world that usually doesn’t care about you. That’s not a reason to give up and surrender; it’s motivation to continue the fight for survival.

Call it Nietzschean if you will.

Propaganda makes for terrible art. No one wants to listen to a crappy diatribe pretending to be a song. They want to listen to music that moves them, regardless of its intended message.

If right-wingers wish to appreciate or even create art in line with their values and aspirations, metal offers a good model. It doesn’t concern itself with the news of the day or campaign issues. It’s not whiny protest music or offering the peace pipe to the whole world. It’s a genre that puts the music first. Everything else, including the right-coded themes, is secondary.

It’s one of the many reasons why metal rules.

Order Scott Greer’s new book, “Whitepill: The Online Right and the Making of Trump’s America,” from this link.

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Hegseth assumes the American public is the same as it was in the 19th century. Back then, hangings served as community entertainment. But we live in a different age now, and the people don’t want to have the government broadcast such acts of violence to households across the country. The purpose of such a move is ostensibly to sate the public’s appetite for justice. But all it will do is repel them.

This is not an argument against the death penalty. The sentence is necessary for certain crimes. People like Hasan, who shot and killed 13 people and wounded dozens more, should not be allowed to live out their days on the taxpayer’s dime. There are crimes so horrible that they demand the ultimate penalty. It matters little if studies “prove” that the sentence doesn’t deter future horrific crimes. Certain offenses should be met with death.

You read the rest here.

It should be noted that a new poll shows 80 percent of the public opposes the livestreamed execution. Trump did the right thing in making sure Hasan’s execution is off-camera.

On a very different subject, I appeared on Kevin DeAnna’s VERY POPULAR Identity Politics podcast this week to discuss Whitepill, the Alt Right, and how conservatism has changed since we got involved in politics. You should WATCH:

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Most of the world doesn’t have this issue. Everyone knows what makes someone Chinese, Polish, or Indian. America is different as there is no accompanying “American” ethnic group. For the vast majority of Americans, “American” simply means you have U.S. citizenship and has nothing to do with ancestry.

That’s not satisfying for much of the New Right. They would prefer a thicker American identity, as well as a term that distinguishes the founding population from everyone else. As I’ve explained in past articles, we used to have terms to describe this population. Both “Native American” and “Anglo-Saxon” were previously used by this demographic. But Native American now applies to Indians and no one uses Anglo-Saxon anymore. Rightists could use “white,” but that makes most people queasy.

Thus, there’s a demand for a new term. As most readers know, the favored term is “Heritage American.” It’s become common parlance in political commentary, but it hasn’t taken off offline. While Heritage American hasn’t become something normies identify with, it can still be a useful way to classify white Americans whose ancestry traces back to colonial days.

There’s a better term to describe the core national population: Generic American.

Heritage American implies that the core demographic deeply cares about their colonial ancestry. As someone from this cohort, I can report that they don’t really care. They strongly identify with America, but they lack any sense of ethno-cultural identity. Generic American is also a broader category that would include the white ethnics and some recent arrivals who assimilated to basic America.

Generic Americans are the mainstream standard for the country. They were once universally white and culturally Anglo-Protestant. Thanks to mass immigration, that’s beginning to change. There’s still a general understanding of what a Generic American is, but the standards for entry are increasingly low. It just means speaking English, participating in our consumer culture, and having some level of respect for our political values. It’s uninspiring, which is why so many on the Right yearn for a not-so generic Americanism.

Generic, according to Merriam-Webster, means “having no particularly distinctive quality or application.” This is an appropriate way to describe average Americans as a group. Obviously, as individuals, Americans have distinctive qualities. We’ve got many characters in our country. But as a group, Generic Americans are known for their lack of distinguishing qualities. The average citizen doesn’t have particular folk customs, specific traditions, or much of an ancestral past they fall back on. They simply speak English, shop, watch sports, and celebrate the big holidays in the usual American fashion. That makes them Americans to the rest of the world, but it doesn’t come with the distinctive identity that, say, Irish or Italian gives an individual. It’s rather generic.

The low standard for entry allows plenty of people to become Generic Americans. It’s not about ancestry; it’s about cultural assimilation, and it doesn’t take much effort to enjoy hamburgers, football, and pop music. People don’t treat this as a specific ethno-cultural thing. It’s just what normal Americans are supposed to be into.

There’s always been a basic American identity, and, as previously mentioned, it was tied more to Anglo ancestry, Protestantism, and whiteness in the past. There were also strong local identities tied to hometowns, regions, and states. Most of these identities fit in with the Anglo mainstream; others did not. There were ethnic enclaves that, for a time, resisted Anglification. Southerners, while being Anglo-Protestant, also had a distinct identity from the mainstream. The emphasis on whiteness excluded non-whites from the mainstream. Blacks developed a thick ethno-cultural identity partially in response to this exclusion.

We’re in a different situation today as we’ve become more homogenized. Many of those local identities were hollowed out alongside the towns and regions that gave them life. Americans have always been a nomadic people, but it’s even truer in our era and makes them even less likely to be tied to a specific locale. We all moved to the suburbs and became like our nondescript neighbors. There are fewer enclaves where particularist identities (at least for whites) can flourish. These identities, such as “Southerner” and “Italian,” have largely been submerged by generification. We still speak English and we prefer it without an accent, but Anglo-Protestantism and whiteness aren’t as emphasized anymore. They were de-emphasized to make the basic national identity more inclusive. That’s made it much thinner in quality.

One could call this deracination. Without roots, without tradition, and without heritage, Americans are able to see themselves as mere individuals. Leftists often call this a privilege of whiteness, but the Generic Americans would bitterly contest that race has anything to do with it.

Many Generic Americans are fine with this. They want to be seen as individuals, not as part of some group. Most under 60 can’t even remember when there was an alternative to being a Generic American. They didn’t grow up in the old neighborhood and their suburb didn’t have a strong sense of self. An identity centered on sports and consumer products is all they’ve known.

This explains the curious nostalgia propaganda that proliferates on social media. While right-wingers do make memes about the frontier and the Founding Fathers, what really inspires people are older examples of consumer culture. Both right-wingers and normies will lament the disappearance of Blockbuster, malls, and McDonald’s playgrounds. A short clip of high schoolers from the 2000s elicits overwrought reactions on all that we’ve lost and how 2007 was a time when America had a rooted folk culture.

Nostalgia is common, especially among conservatives. The Right usually believes the past is better than the present. But the rhetoric around the recent past is strange. Many aspects of the 90s and 2000s were better, but it was hardly a conservative paradise. Conservatives at the time thought they were living in Gomorrah. They bemoaned pop culture and the decline in social values. Malls were denounced by culture critics of the past as soulless husks that destroy local businesses. Now they’re remembered as our ancestral villages, which private equity took away from us. Other things we lament have been replaced by better alternatives. We now have infinite streaming choices at a lower price than Blockbuster. You can now avoid the hassle of mall shopping with Amazon Prime. And so on and so forth.

It’s silly to think the “regime” took away our Toys ‘R’ Us, but it’s a genuine feeling. That’s because this is the only heritage many Generic Americans have. When thinking about their own past, it’s the malls and popular movies of their childhood. The frontier and their settler ancestors are an abstraction to Generic Americans. In contrast, they have vivid memories of going to Blockbuster as a kid and then a certain pop song coming on as they drove home. Our history and traditions don’t hold nearly the kind of sway over the Generic American mind as the memories of a supposedly better consumer culture.

There are legitimate reasons to fondly look back on the 90s. It was a whiter America with a better popular culture and more optimism. But that translated to End of History liberalism rather than anything right-wing. The mainstream consensus touted a multicultural future with even more immigration. That same period also had more violent crime, which undermines claims you can’t shop safely today. You were more likely to be robbed and murdered on your way to the mall than you are today.

What’s true is that the good life is now more expensive than it was in the 90s and the demographics are worse. Seeing a mall filled with nice white people naturally produces a sense of loss. But we can’t return to the End of History. A better ideal is needed, even if this rhetoric can be useful to persuade ordinary people of how diversity degrades American life.

The vast majority of people will remain Generic Americans for the foreseeable future. That’s not a horrible thing. These people can still be convinced to want law-and-order, immigration restriction, and other good policies. They’re just not going to get into the völkisch nationalism the Right would prefer. They’re not that into their heritage or rediscovering their roots. They’re mostly fine with being mere individuals.

But it will be a challenge for right-wing partisans. A Generic American identity isn’t sufficient for them. This deracinated norm is what drove the old Alt Right to try to create a white identity independent of America. As I write about in Whitepill, this white identity avoided obvious American trappings and relied on various traits and traditions from Europe. It was an artificial creation of an extremely online movement. It was appealing to a certain kind of internet denizen, but unappealing to most of the country.

The Online Right of today prefers Americana over pan-Europeanism. That may explain some of its greater popularity than the Alt Right. But it can distort perceptions of what actual Americans are like. The American identity preferred by the Online Right is not the same as what ordinary citizens want. That’s okay, but it should be kept in mind when prognosticating on the Silent Majority and what it believes. It must always be remembered that these people are Generic Americans.

A country that knows itself doesn’t endlessly ask itself “What is an American?” The identity battle will continue to rage on in political commentary. But for many Americans, they will continue living their lives as deracinated individuals. They’ll only be shaken from their blissful existence when they discover that everyone else at the Costco doesn’t look like their image of a Generic American.

Order Scott Greer’s new book, “Whitepill: The Online Right and the Making of Trump’s America,” from this link.

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Campus rape hysteria isn’t new to this country. It dominated public discourse in the mid-2010s and served as an inspiration for my first book, No Campus for White Men. But it’s not 2015 anymore. The media no longer imagines young men as dangerous sex predators, at least not before the Cornell story broke. Most coverage centers on how young men aren’t having sex, aren’t drinking, aren’t having friends, and aren’t even leaving their homes. The Cornell 7 seem to be going against the grain here.

The other change from 2015 is the mainstreaming of gender hate, particularly misandry. While incels, redpillers, and the Right’s alleged misogyny are regularly castigated in the press, what’s more popular and socially acceptable is hating men. It animates the outrage over the Cornell 7. It’s also an irresistible force. Women have more power than ever in American society, as apparent in the normie response to the Cornell case and Lindsay Clancy. Both cases also reveal how women don’t want to be held responsible for their poor decisions, which society seems to want to accommodate.

The Cornell case offers a grim preview of how the gender wars will shape politics and society in the future. Despite college students having less sex than ever before, rampant misandry may force a revival of campus rape hysteria and create policy changes. Democrats are eager to latch onto the Cornell story to gin up support from female voters. As part of that process, we could end up with draconian laws that make it easier for women to send men to prison for regrettable sex and other non-crimes. While the media obsesses over random right-wingers who meme about repealing the 19th Amendment, the real result of the gender war will be aimed at men, not women.

The first thing we should know about the case is that nothing truly illegal occurred here. As the district attorney concluded from his original investigation, Jane Doe consented to what happened. She even explained in text messages to one of her “assailants” that nothing illegal occurred. But being known as the girl to have group sex with a bunch of dudes is not a reputation anyone wants. The rape accusation is likely inspired by this embarrassment.

But unlike past hoaxes, the act did in fact occur. Fraternity guys engaging in group sex with a drunk coed is not a good look, even if consensual. It’s easy to whip up outrage over such a tawdry occurrence. Few want to defend such an act. That makes it easier for the “victim” to claim it was a rape and build a narrative around privileged men abusing innocent girls on Cornell.

This especially upsets women. As previously noted, social media is awash with deranged takes on the Cornell case. The only place where you’ll find dissent from the mainstream consensus is on RW parts of X. X itself is mostly in favor of the established normie narrative that seven villainous frat boys raped an innocent girl. A similar dynamic played out in the Lindsay Clancy case. If you spend most of your time on RW X, you would think most people understood Clancy was a cold-blooded killer and should face the death penalty. But this was a minority opinion on social media. Everywhere else, Clancy was seen as a sympathetic woman who only killed due to mental illness.

The normie opinion in both cases is obviously determined by women. In both cases, women demand to not be held responsible for their actions and the blame is shifted onto men. (Patrick Clancy was often blamed for the murders either for not caring enough for his wife or for being the actual killer.) The facts of both cases do not support the popular normie narratives, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is what women think about them, and that determines the popular reaction.

It would be one thing if this were just a temporary social media trend and people went about their daily business after a week. Lindsay Clancy fandom is insane, but it fortunately did not lead to legislatures giving women with postpartum depression a license to kill. It’s a different story with the Cornell case. Democratic lawmakers are exploiting it for political gain.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul has appointed state Attorney General Letitia James as the special prosecutor. James previously made her name persecuting Donald Trump, VDARE, and the NRA. Hochul also wants to change her state’s standard of consent to end the “voluntary intoxication loophole.” This refers to the fact that people who’ve imbibed spirits can still consent to sex. But Hochul thinks that’s wrong, so now women can claim they were raped if the sex sucked and they agreed to it after a glass of wine. It will give women more power over relationships, which will likely further worsen other social ills. It’s unwise to criminalize consensual sex when young people are already not dating and view the other gender negatively.

But it makes sense to women, particularly to young Democratic women. One new poll showed that 66 percent of Democratic women under 30 believe men are largely responsible for women’s problems. This is a demographic ready and eager to believe frat boys are getting away with rape thanks to the “intoxication loophole.”

Other states could join in targeting this apparent loophole. Stiffer, affirmative consent laws could become a popular demand among Democratic hopefuls in the 2028 primary. They’re unlikely to stop there. While Greek life is growing nationwide, liberals could be inspired to demand more restrictions and regulations on fraternities in response to the Cornell case. The idea of young white men having their own exclusive spaces is already deeply upsetting to the Left. Now the impression they serve as rape dens can be used to justify an anti-fraternity crusade on behalf of aggrieved young women. (Sororities will be excluded from this crusade, of course.)

Democrats will insist on restoring the Obama administration’s draconian additions to Title IX that helped engineer campus rape hysteria in the 2010s. They may find new ways to make it worse, such as immediate expulsion for a mere accusation rather than waiting for a kangaroo court to decide the matter. There are many possibilities here to make the lives of young men worse.

What’s important, and disturbing, to know is that this anti-male push has a degree of popularity. It’s something Democratic politicians are eager to play up in order to gain votes and turn out their base. This is very different from the media fixation on right-wing misogyny. Media outlets have become obsessed with how conservatives supposedly now want to eliminate women’s rights. The evidence comes from random X posters and a few shock-jock commentators. It gets good engagement on X, but has zero play in the real world. There is no Republican politician who’s going to campaign on repealing the 19th and giving incels a girlfriend. There’s a far greater chance of Democratic politicians campaigning on putting incels in concentration camps.

The simple reason is that there is a conceivable base of support for that idea. Young women could be persuaded that their lives are endangered by incels; thus, we need to use the Patriot Act against them. There are plenty of men who would support this idea as well. Just check normie social media for guys rushing to believe the Cornell story and peacock for GOOD MEN points.

There is no base of support for repealing women’s rights outside of the right-wing internet space. It’s just a shitpost rather than a serious policy proposal.

That’s why society should be more worried about misandry than misogyny. The incels only really pose a threat to themselves. They are a marginal, widely disliked demographic. They aren’t going to take over the government. Meanwhile, a society where our pop hits, viral social media trends, and popular TV shows all encourage women to think of men as either losers or potential rapists will further degrade gender relations and make for bad policy decisions.

A new campus rape hysteria would likely be even worse than the first wave a decade ago. We now live in a time of even worse gender relations, in which mainstream politicians are more willing to cater to a feminist extremism. Woke may be in retreat, but it can always return with renewed force. The Cornell case may be the beginning of a new iteration of woke–and it will not be kind to men.

Order Scott Greer’s new book, “Whitepill: The Online Right and the Making of Trump’s America,” from this link.

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Lyndon B. Johnson, the man who enacted the Civil Rights Revolution, was at a loss for what was going on. He had done more than any president since Abraham Lincoln to lift up blacks; and they paid him back with race riots. A disoriented and beleaguered LBJ settled on handing off a solution to a presidential commission. He hoped the body’s report would vindicate his civil rights policies and make a few minor, inoffensive suggestions for containing the problem.

Instead, the Kerner Commission offered a radical, far-left broadside to a troubled nation. It declared the riots a result of white racism, and demanded America redistribute white wealth to the ghettos. The commission report embarrassed LBJ and helped Richard Nixon paint Democrats as out of touch with the Silent Majority. Americans wanted law and order, but the Kerner Commission insisted on coddling the rioters. LBJ, knowing the national mood, didn’t want to embrace it. But the left wing of the Democratic Party championed it, with Robert F. Kennedy making it part of his presidential campaign.

Today, the report is remembered by academics and journalists as a missed opportunity that could’ve made America a better country. PBS’s 2024 documentary on the Kerner Commission emphasized this point ad nauseam. But only an idiot would think that. The Kerner Commission shows how many of the “woke” tendencies we decry in our era are nothing new; they’ve been with us for a long time and inspired officials to make insane recommendations all the way back in the 1960s. The report was not prophetic in the least. Race riots died down in the 1970s in large part due to law enforcement cracking down on black militants. Claims the report could’ve made America better overlook the tremendous level of resources and privileges this country gave to blacks after the 1960s. Yet, the PBS documentary and modern textbooks imagine America cruelly left blacks behind.

This must be imagined in order to defend liberalism. Horrific race riots undermined support for further civil rights legislation and social welfare programs. The Kerner report offered a convenient villain for this change: whites. That fact, along with its radical solutions, makes the Kerner Commission worthy of left-wing veneration. But it doesn’t deserve that. Any right-thinking person should look upon it with contempt.

The commission wasn’t stacked with radicals. LBJ sought to make it a bipartisan body with moderate politicians and respectable public figures. It was nominally led by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner Jr., a middle-of-the-road Democrat. The rest of the commission, whether Republican or Democrat, would’ve been considered “centrists.” There were only two blacks on the commission: NAACP head Roy Wilkins and liberal Republican Senator Edward Brooke. Both were mocked by black militants and were more moderate than Martin Luther King Jr. LBJ ensured that all of its members supported his civil rights legislation, mostly in the hope that the commission would vindicate his agenda.

But, as Steven M. Gillon outlines in Separate and Unequal, the commission was taken in a different direction by two unlikely Anglo-Saxon figures. New York Mayor John Lindsay was an archetypal WASP patrician. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed Lindsay was born to a wealthy New York family and went to Yale for undergrad and law school. His good looks made some journalists see him as the Republican answer to JFK. In spite of his WASP background and GOP affiliation, Lindsay was a bleeding-heart liberal. He would go on to switch parties and wreck New York City.

His primary ally on the commission was Oklahoma Senator Fred Harris. Harris was a salt-of-the-earth Middle American. He grew up in rural poverty and had a populist streak. His background made him an unusual champion of black militant demands, but he came to see this as one of the central issues of his political career. It would come to alienate him from his own voters.

Harris lived long enough to participate in the PBS documentary. I couldn’t help but loathe him. Here’s this folksy gentile from Oklahoma talking about how the government needs to spend billions to reward rioters and how bad “white racism” is. It’s expected to hear this from coastal liberals and black columnists. But to hear from it an “my pappy always said…” type is too much to take.

Lindsay and Harris demonstrate how the Civil Rights Revolution came to be accepted in the country. It wasn’t just some trick pulled by ethnic outsiders and black militants. The Anglo core of the nation (southern whites excepted) largely acquiesced to it. They felt it was the “right thing to do.” They thought the legislation, which would undermine the Constitution and racially discriminate against whites, was in line with what the Founders intended. They respected MLK (at least in the early 60s) and some even sympathized with the Black Panthers.

Lindsay and Harris are two completely different sides of “Heritage America”--and they both blamed black riots on white racism and demanded massive government expenditures to placate black radicals. While they didn’t represent the Silent Majority in 1968 (Nixon and George Wallace were closer to public opinion), they weren’t outliers. Without “Heritage Americans” like Lindsay and Harris, we wouldn’t have had the Civil Rights Revolution or the Hart-Celler Act.

You could say they were duped into supporting these changes. But they genuinely believed in them. They felt it was truly American to do so and made the country better.

They were dead wrong.

Their agenda did not go unchallenged on the commission. Their primary opponent was Tex Thornton, a Texas businessman and LBJ associate. Thornton was a rare source of common sense among the liberal majority. The critic opposed using the commission to push for radical social reforms and blaming the riots on white racism. He felt the body should focus on how law enforcement should respond to the riots rather than trying to change society. But the commission was more interested in assailing the police for somehow causing the violence than providing federal aid to law enforcement. Thornton was incensed by the commission seemingly excusing the riots by blaming white racism and poverty. In Thornton’s opinion, that gave a permission slip to 30 million Americans to riot whenever they pleased. The businessman was troubled by the conditions within the black community, but believed they were the result of black culture rather than intentional oppression.

While Thornton was extremely critical of the commission, he lent his approval to its final report. He was persuaded to do so after threatening to offer his own minority opinion dissenting from the consensus. Lindsay and the other liberals threatened to offer their own separate opinions–which would be even more radical than the final report–if he did so. That convinced Thornton to sign off.

Thornton could’ve been a hero. Instead, he chose the path of least resistance, making him an accurate representative of the Silent Majority. Many Americans were fed up with the riots and the demands of civil rights activists. But they weren’t about to revolt over it. A number were still willing to go along with left-wing demands, so long as they were left alone. That seemed to be Thornton’s primary reason for accepting a report he strongly disagreed with–and it provides another reason why middle America uneasily accepted the Civil Rights Revolution. They were left with few alternatives. When faced with no choices, most just went with the flow. But when given a choice to reject the radical changes, as they would be given in the ‘68 election, they would take it.

Thornton wasn’t the only critical member to sign off on the report. Another skeptic, Republican congressman William McCulloch, didn’t agree with the commission’s recommendations for extravagant government spending. The fiscal conservative, however, agreed with the report blaming white racism for the riots.

The report offered a searing indictment of white America.

“What white Americans have never fully understood – but what the Negro can never forget – is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto,” the Kerner report argued. “White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”

It warned that America “is moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal.” This dire prospect inspired the commission to demand the government spend incredible amounts of money to provide employment, housing, and additional welfare to the ghettos. It also urged for even more money to be doled out for education in black communities. Instead of requesting additional resources and tough-on-crime laws to back local police, the commission recommended that lawmakers work to eliminate “police brutality.”

The commission was a product of its members and staff meeting with black militants, community activists, and other progressives. It didn’t really care for the opinions of law enforcement. Unsurprisingly, it ended up as a far-left document meant to cater to the most radical elements of the hood.

The report could’ve even been worse. The commission reached out to academics to help study the problem. The academics produced an even crazier paper, called The Harvest of American Racism. This report explicitly defended the rioters and argued that the violence was a rational response to white racism. Its conclusion, written by sociologist Lou Goldberg, sounded like a Black Power manifesto. It threatened America would face a race war if it did not embark on “highly accelerated social change.” That would require the government to hand over control of these communities to black militants and directly fund the radicals. According to Goldberg, only they knew what to do with that money.

The academics’ report was too much for the commission to stomach and was rejected.

The Kerner report immediately captured public attention when it was released in early 1968. The book version became a massive bestseller. Newspapers throughout the country covered it and debated its findings. So did politicians. LBJ was agitated by the report and didn’t even bother thanking the commissioners for their work. He would later come to tout most of its findings after his Democratic rivals championed the report, in particular Robert F. Kennedy. Elite opinion was overwhelmingly in favor of the report, but the people weren’t. Republicans would pick up on that disconnect for the ‘68 election, with Nixon holding up the report as evidence of liberals losing touch with the Silent Majority.

Then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan also skewered the report. But he said his fellow Republicans needed to take the commission’s indictment of white racism seriously, claiming “prejudice” caused many of the problems of the 60s. He said they needed to offer conservative solutions to the issue of “equal rights,” trusting that the free market and individual initiative could handle the matter.

Reagan’s response shows how many Americans were willing to accept white racism’s alleged responsibility for the riots. Even back then, public figures were already beholden to the Left’s dictates.

While Congress did pass the Fair Housing Act in 1968, the government didn’t carry out the Kerner report’s recommendations. And the Fair Housing Act wasn’t enough to satisfy the Left’s demands for housing support. LBJ privately griped that he had no way of finding the billions the commission demanded. Nixon won the presidential election, and that effectively buried the report.

Liberals today see that as a tragedy. The PBS documentary laments that RFK didn’t become president and save the country from the ruin promised by the Kerner report. The report’s authors thought it was possible America would turn into Algeria or Northern Ireland if its solutions weren’t accepted. But we didn’t take up the recommendations, and blacks apparently remained second-class citizens with no opportunities, no jobs, no schools, and no welfare. At least that’s what the viewers of the PBS doc are supposed to believe.

None of this is true, of course. America did not experience a guerrilla insurrection like Algeria. In fact, tough law enforcement prevented one from breaking out. The FBI cracked down hard on black militants, breaking up their networks, and discrediting their leaders. The Kerner report insisted there was no connection between militant leaders and the riots. But once the feds undermined these leaders, race riots died down.

Instead of a race war, America experienced a massive crime wave that pushed whites out of the cities. Several cities came to be dominated by black power. As we can see with Detroit, Cleveland, and other cities, it was for the worst. John Lindsay tried to govern New York City with the spirit of the Kerner Commission–and he turned the Big Apple into a hellhole. Soft-on-crime policies, socialist housing initiatives, and more generous welfare did nothing but make the city’s problems worse. No other person deserves more blame for New York’s sorry, pre-Giuliani state than John Lindsay.

The PBS documentary conveniently overlooked Lindsay’s attempts to enact the Kerner agenda in his own city.

It also failed to mention all that America did for blacks after the 60s. Public housing was expanded, affirmative action was enshrined, billions were spent on urban public education, welfare was generously doled out, government jobs went overwhelmingly to blacks, and they received two federal holidays to celebrate themselves. In spite of all this, blacks as a whole didn’t advance much. In some ways, the community got worse, with the explosion of out-of-wedlock births and the ghettos getting even more violent. But some took these opportunities, got out of the hood, and achieved the American Dream–all while still feeling this country is irredeemably racist.

It’s popular to believe America did nothing for blacks, which is why the media still propounds this line. It’s a great myth we tell ourselves to support such notions as the 1619 Project and other nonsense.

The racial violence the report predicted didn’t come to pass, at least not like the authors expected. The liberal experts thought blacks may launch an insurrection against the state and we may have Belfasts all over the country. Instead, blacks just ethnically cleansed whites from many urban neighborhoods and stuck to gang violence rather than political terrorism. This made many cities hellholes, but it didn’t threaten the prevailing order that much. America got used to it, built a semi-segregated society around it, and moved on. The ghettos were dangerous and made people think twice about moving to urban areas, but they didn’t sustain a political insurrection. One could argue that what happened to America was much worse…

This government report was not a missed opportunity. Its solutions would’ve just bankrupted America and made the entire nation look like the hellscape that was John Lindsay’s New York. The Kerner Commission should stand as a testament to the long-standing naivete and idiocy of American liberals. The morons who marched for Black Lives Matter and cried over George Floyd in 2020 followed an ignominious tradition. They will always refuse to blame the black community for its own misdeeds. They will always blame whites, “whiteness,” “white supremacy,” and/or “systemic racism.”

This mentality has been with us for awhile–and it’s always been the enemy.

Order Scott Greer’s new book, “Whitepill: The Online Right and the Making of Trump’s America,” from this link.

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