Fall out of CASS report

RedToothBrush · Today 10:50

^In Hungary we visited The House of Terror in Budapest which is a museum dedicated to the Stasi https://terrorhaza.hu/en^

Sorry to nit pick... The Stasi were the East German secret police, the Hungarian version were the AVH.

In truth, though, “experts” are a front for the TUA (a Truth Universally Acknowledged): the chattering-class moral consensus. And this is manufactured by people who care less about being right than looking virtuous. Career moral entrepreneurs such as Hunt; vacuous grandes dames such as Allsopp; “communicators” such as Rutherford whose job is to make consensus look sciency. Downstream of their posturing, children were irreversibly harmed. They didn’t care; they wanted to look kinder than you. They should not be allowed to forget how wrong they got it.

Mary Harrington on form again. She has such an interesting way with words - creating pithy new phrases which describe what is really going on:

Gender Vivisection.

Here she talks about people back pedalling from former positions in the light of the Cass Review - focusing here on Kirsty Allsop. She talks about how moral consensus tends to precede rationalisation.

"So, now the winds have changed, we find Allsopp also back-pedalling. It was never true, she asserts, that there was “no debate” on the issue of medical experiments on gender-confused children. Puberty blockers, Kirstie informs us, were bad all along. But we could always talk about it: “it is, and always has been possible to debate these things and those saying there was no debate are wrong”. All the people (mostly women) unfairly fired or bullied out of jobs, all the grannies punched by men with special identities, the no-platforming, the intimidation, the threats, and the censorship — that wasn’t actually a thing.

Allsopp is the clearest indicator yet that at least where child gender vivisection is concerned, at least some of the grandes dames of Truth Universally Acknowledged may have paused broadcasting a TUA in order to convince themselves, in the light of a new emerging groupthink, that the new consensus is what they believed all along. And because moral consensus precedes its “expert” rationalisation, so we also find that those who purport to stand for science and reason are also curiously quiet"

https://unherd.com/2024/04/why-the-centrists-changed-their-trans-tune/

Once things have calmed down, I think it is really important that we look at whatever aspects of society which allowed this to take root in the younger population so strongly. For instance, I can absolutely understand why a girl may not want her body changing, may not want to grow up as a woman - still earning less overall, still more vulnerable and unsafe, still taken less seriously, still in danger of being raped and not taken seriously over that, etc etc. There are so many problems with being a woman in society that it really is daunting; these things are all spoken of much more widely than they were when I was growing up. I'm not saying they shouldn't be spoken of so openly, they absolutely should, but in 40 years since I was in my 20s, that's the most progress we seem to have made, that we speak of those injustices and inequalities more openly. We haven't stopped or changed them much. Sometimes I feel so hopeless about sex equality. The main problem I see is men, and men aren't particularly engaged except as TWs who certainly aren't interested in making life better for anyone except themselves.

If you and your fellows are going to be free to do what the fuck you want, and the material goods are going to be provided by others, possibly without their consent, then elements of Stalinism would seem to be necessary to deliver that.

I actually Norovirus 'communism' is a form of Ultra Libertarianism. But with elements of Stalinism.

Yes to McCarthyism as well!

We’re in full on Orwell plus McCarthyism

I’m glad others find it as mad as I do because I look at the AIBIU threads on this topic and just think what

But we are taught little about the abuse and dangerous of Communism and the far left. Instead it can almost be glorified.

As a communist (Marxist) I don't actually see the far left as embracing communism so much as an odd form of identity politics influenced ultra-liberalism with an equally odd prejudice against free speech. They are influenced by neoliberalism if nothing else. Most couldn't tell you the name of three books that Marx wrote let alone hold forth on the contradictions of the capitalist mode of production or tell you what surplus-vale and profit are.

Orwell, of course, wrote 1984 as a warning against the far left which he viewed as a huge danger to British Society - more so than the far right - because culturally he thought we were more vulnerable to it.

He explicitly talked about 'wrong think'.

We've literally got a book spelling out the issues, yet the SNP still see this as a manifesto not a warning about the power of censorship and the risks of the abuse of the power of censorship.

Its totally fucked up.

The problem I've seen repeated over and over again is that there is a total lack of historical and political understanding of the far left.

In this country we are taught about the dangers of Nazis repeatedly and well.

But we are taught little about the abuse and dangerous of Communism and the far left. Instead it can almost be glorified. Norovirsus media and its cheer leaders present Communism as something completely different to what it is too, which doesn't help.

Young people in the UK do not under who Stalin was, who the Stasi were, who the KGB were, don't draw parallels or questions over the Chinese or Vietnamese governments, don't under who the Khmer Rogue were etc etc.

The only time, I've REALLY learnt about it has been from spending time in Eastern Europe particularly in Lativa, Hungary and the former Yugoslav Republics. This is despite extended family members being directly affected by the division of Germany and the Berlin Wall (my grandfather remarried a german woman) and seeing the Iron Curtain before it fell.

We happened to be in Riga on 20 Jan a few years back and they had memorial services and candles in the part which we didn't understand. We looked it up...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Barricades
It was about resistence to Soviet oppression trying to prevent Independence. In 1991. This isn't ancient history. Yet I didn't really know about it (I was 12 at the time of The Barricades).

In Hungary we visited The House of Terror in Budapest which is a museum dedicated to the Stasi https://terrorhaza.hu/en

Honestly, we should be aware that this is a problem within history teaching in the UK. Its a massive gap in understanding the world and has much more relevance and importance to us than knowing about zillions of Kings and Queens.

I did wonder what you meant there Boiled.
But then I thought if only one person in a family is personally impacted by this mess we have been in, the whole family is impacted.
The collective damage is surely immeasurable and still unfolding.

But how often does expressing a “wrong view” lead to animosity and the end of friendships because you’ve “demonstrated” that you’re “one of the bad people”?

And given that there are places, like Scotland, where this might be judged as a hate crime by someone?

We have to get back to debate. Voicing our opinions and listening to those of others. Thinking and reasoning.

I completely agree with this. I suspect social media may well be to blame (pile-ons, virtue signalling, the inability to debate adequately in 140 characters, thus reducing discourse to soundbite flinging) but we have so often completely lost the ability to debate respectfully and still remain friends with someone with whom we disagree.

A mate of mine and I were in the pub one day. A contentious subject came up and it was clear we had very different views. She asked me why I felt the way I did. I explained. She asked me some questions, since it was something I had involvement in and I answered, and vice versa. We remained on opposing sides of the issue but understood more about each others’ stance and had learned a bit more about the issue. We then moved on with our conversation and remain friends.

But how often does expressing a “wrong view” lead to animosity and the end of friendships because you’ve “demonstrated” that you’re “one of the bad people”?

It’s like the whole thing with LWS events. If a right wing group turns up and I’m there too, it just means we agree on one thing. I don’t generally have right wing views and agreeing on one thing doesn’t mean we agree on anything else whatsoever. But to the social puritans agreeing on one thing is unacceptable and I’m now tainted with being a right wing nut job.

WHY?

Which is ironic in a way, when you consider that anyone who does speak up and try to debate is met with a hail of accusations of being “right wing”.

Those EDI staff and consultants are not going to give up their livelihoods without a fight. Ruth Hunt and her rewriting of history isagood example.

There are a lot of managers who think management is a tick box exercise. Set targets, achieve targets, earn bonus. EDI targets are relatively simple - just contract out to a third party. In the public sector especially the NHS and in sclerotic organisations like John Lewis, real managers, ones who act dynamically to respond to changes in circumstances and understand their service/business, staff and customers.

Equally in wider society people are used to bubbles of no debate. Concerned about continued membership of the EU or about uncontrolled immigration, or about what was going in Rotherham - you must be a racist. Linked to the American religious far right. Ditto TWAW.

We have to get back to debate. Voicing our opinions and listening to those of others. Thinking and reasoning.

I said it out loud a month or so back in an arty west London book club, with people who pride themselves on their liberal and compassionate views. Men should not be in women’s sport. A feisty former barrister challenged me, but everyone else stayed silent. I held my ground. Cass will help us start saying things out loud.

I agree, @RedToothBrush - we are on a knife-edge here, and most people are totally n=blind to it, because they haven't (yet) been personally touched by it.

This.

Democracy has not faced threats this big since the 1930s. And arguably for long before that.

I don't think many people realise how perilously freedom currently sits.

Its not even just women, its democratic institutions and processes. I know that seems melodramatic, but even though there has been dirty tricks played in politics since the dawn of time, the idea that its now acceptable to achieve political goals using undemocratic methods has become openly mainstream on the left and right (specifically abortion and trans issues).

@ArabellaScott

"In response to the scandal breaking, and if one had been supportive of sterilising vulnerable children, one imagines extreme shame, embarrassment, perhaps contrition.

But it's important to consider that many people were invested in TWAW precisely because of their personality traits - many disingenuous, narcissistic, willing to compromise morals in exchange for power - and some perhaps credulous, gullible, sentimental, zealous. Those traits won't change for most people.

A chap who enjoys wearing a balaclava and shouting at women while wearing a T shirt that says 'kill the terf' is not going to have a sudden change of heart;, he'll find another reason to threaten women, because it excites him."

I completely agree with what you've said so well here.

My hope is that, now threatened, their traits/disorders will manifest so much more sharply and clearly. I kind of look forward to some Rumpelstiltskin moments for a little light relief. I know that isn't the point. But, like in the Victoria Smith piece that was posted, at least everyone would see as clearly as we do. (Hope not just a pipe dream, however it comes to pass...)

Brilliant news!

Sparkly, that is excellent news. Well done!

I'm really pleased to hear that Sparkly!

Jo Bartosch in the Critic lays some of it out

https://thecritic.co.uk/the-cass-review-is-not-the-end/