MANY thanks Dr. Facal for your EXCELLENT article published yesterday in the Journal de Montréal.
Here is a quick translation… but first, the original in French.
https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2020/12/05/la-grande-demission-des-intellectuels
“When I spoke to Richard Martineau on his show “Les francs-tireurs”, he noted that the most astonishing transformation of our time is that of the left.
I obviously agree [Bambi too ☹].
The traditional left wanted universal solidarity: to unite, beyond divisions, on the basis of a common right to dignity.
The new left proposes a return to ethnoreligious and identity tribalism: we define people by their colour, their religion, or their gender.
Alliance
Why has this left, in spite of its silliness and its excesses, the wind in its sails?
For two reasons.
The first reason for its strength is that it is the combination of four streams of thought.
First, we recycle residues of Marxism to feed an anti-capitalist discourse.
Capitalism certainly poses multiple problems, but all the attempts to get out of it have produced widespread poverty and the decline in freedoms.
There are no known exceptions.
Second, this new left is often the relay for anti-Western Islamism.
It will suggest that a free thinker who was murdered has asked for it, a little bit, with his words, or that Islamist extremism is a reaction to the discrimination suffered by all Muslims in our societies.
Third, the so-called “anti-colonial” left chooses to see only one racism, that of whites, and to see it everywhere.
Fourth, radical feminists fuel the hatred of all men, and defend a religious extremism of which they would be the first victims in the Middle East [Good point, thank you. In many earlier posts, Bambi denounced the silence of our contemporary feminists following several stories of honour killing in that part of the world].
When these four mighty forces combine, the wind starts ruffling our hair.
But this wind is blowing hard, I said, for a second reason.
It is blowing hard because many don’t dare stand up to it.
It is in universities that these discourses are constructed before being picked up by columnists and activists.
However, in universities, fear reigns.
Entire departments are kidnapped by activists: they are not researchers because they already have all the answers.
Disgusted or scared teachers walk away and let these excited people take control.
Worse, they justify their resignation by saying they are too busy with a job of which, in the vast majority of cases, nothing, absolutely nothing, will remain in a few years.
Worse, they often do willful blindness.
Our Charles Taylor defends Islamist Tariq Ramadan, who wants us to believe that the rape charges against him are the result of a conspiracy!
Who?
As they flee their responsibilities, there are not many people left to recall the obvious.
Remember that so-called anti-racism, if it targets all white people because they are white, is racism, quite simply.
Remember that “systemic” racism is not a scientific concept, but an ideological weapon.
Remember that women in the Middle East are fighting against this religious obscurantism that many of our feminists support.
Remember that making all Muslims victims is the best way to relieve them of responsibility.
If the intellectuals, if those who have the means to deconstruct these falsehoods, do not do it, who will?”
