Friday Morning Breakfast For The Brain

THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY!

From Occupy To AOC: The Rise Of The New Progressives, Part 2

Via The Federalist

In the four years between Occupy Wall Street and Trump’s victory, the New Progressives made vast cultural gains and prepared to amass real power.

In February 2012, not long after the barricades came down in Zuccotti Park, Trayvon Martin, a black 17-year-old in Florida, was tragically gunned down by George Zimmerman. Martin’s crime? Looking suspicious to Zimmerman.

It was the first of many media-highlighted incidents that cost young black men their lives. Some were even caught on video owing to the promulgation of camera phones. These events, along with a spate of police shootings, spurred the creation of the Black Lives Matter movement and marked a sharp and devastating decline in how Americans felt about race relations.

According to Gallup, at the start of 2013, 72 percent of white Americans and 66 percent of black Americans said relations between whites and blacks were “very good” or “somewhat good.” These were the highest combined numbers ever recorded. By 2015, these numbers went down to 51 percent of whites and 45 percent of blacks, in the sharpest dips in the polling that goes back to 2001.

While these racial attitudes were changing, a growing movement in education, corporations, and social media was bringing intersectional ideas based on privilege theory to the fore and beginning to get some backlash. Where once Americans had a tacit agreement that treating everyone equally was the key to better race relations, the New Progressives rejected this notion, insisting that systemic racism made individuals’ good intentions or actions more or less irrelevant.

Harkening back to the Occupy General Assembly’s progressive stack, what emerged was an attempt to redistribute speech. In practice, this gave the New Progressives license to de-platform, or silence, speakers who would not show deference to the new identity rules. Calls to fire professors, shut down speaking events, and boycott insufficiently leftist companies started to define the New Progressives and further separate them from traditional American liberalism.

Read the entire article HERE.

Carlos Maza’s Reign of Terror

Via Human Events

Where Maza’s power comes from, and how we can take it away.

Is Steven Crowder actually demonetized on YouTube?

It’s hard to tell. Carlos Maza, a former Media Matters activist and current bad actor at Vox, decided that he had heard quite enough from the Mug Club proprietor. He launched a campaign to de-platform Crowder, compiling a video of Crowder’s “bullying” and rallying his journalist buddies to make it go viral.

At first, it looked like YouTube wouldn’t bend to Maza’s pressure campaign. In a threaded reply on Twitter, they explained that while they didn’t agree with Crowder’s speech, it wasn’t a terms of service violation. Maza and his buddies were not fans.

Then, within 24 hours, YouTube reversed themselves; saying that Crowder would in fact be demonetized. Then, a few hours later, they reversed themselves again; saying that Crowder would be re-monetized, so long as he removed one particularly pointed shirt from his merchandise store.

Maza’s pressure campaign has caused plenty of collateral damage, catching Ford Fischer and others in a widespread demonetization.

This episode raises at least two interesting questions.

First, how is Maza getting away with his shenanigans? Maza advocates political violence against conservatives almost as a matter of routine. How is he able to do that – and then turn around and demand that a conservative influencer be de-platformed for “bullying” – with no one in the media calling him out for it?

Second, why is YouTube being so fickle? YouTube’s market position is dominant; by some measures, they have 75% of the online video platform market. How is Maza, an activist at a totally disreputable media outlet, able to leverage his power and have YouTube running scared?

Read the entire article HERE.

Key figure that Mueller report linked to Russia was a State Department intel source

By John Solomon

In a key finding of the Mueller report, Ukrainian businessman Konstantin Kilimnik, who worked for Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, is tied to Russian intelligence.

But hundreds of pages of government documents — which special counsel Robert Mueller possessed since 2018 — describe Kilimnik as a “sensitive” intelligence source for the U.S. State Department who informed on Ukrainian and Russian matters.

Why Mueller’s team omitted that part of the Kilimnik narrative from its report and related court filings is not known. But the revelation of it comes as the accuracy of Mueller’s Russia conclusions face increased scrutiny.

The incomplete portrayal of Kilimnik is so important to Mueller’s overall narrative that it is raised in the opening of his report. “The FBI assesses” Kilimnik “to have ties to Russian intelligence,” Mueller’s team wrote on page 6, putting a sinister light on every contact Kilimnik had with Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman.

What it doesn’t state is that Kilimnik was a “sensitive” intelligence source for State going back to at least 2013 while he was still working for Manafort, according to FBI and State Department memos I reviewed.

Kilimnik was not just any run-of-the-mill source, either.

He interacted with the chief political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, sometimes meeting several times a week to provide information on the Ukraine government. He relayed messages back to Ukraine’s leaders and delivered written reports to U.S. officials via emails that stretched on for thousands of words, the memos show.

The FBI knew all of this, well before the Mueller investigation concluded.

Read the entire article HERE.

Bernie & Joe: Two Old White Men Take the Lead

By Pat Buchanan

In 2018, a record turnout of women, minorities and young added 40 House seats to Democratic ranks and made Nancy Pelosi speaker.

This, we were told, is the new diversity coalition — women, people of color, millennials — that will take down The Donald in 2020.

So, how has the Democratic field sorted itself out half a year later?

According to the Real Clear Politics average of polls, two old white guys, Joe Biden, 76, and Bernie Sanders, 77, are setting the pace and have together corralled more than half of all Democrats.

There is a good chance the party of minorities, millennials and women will be led in 2020 by a white man who would be the oldest candidate ever nominated by a major party.

Biden and Bernie may be wheezing, but the old white boys are out in front of the pack.

Read the entire article HERE.

D.C. Gay Pride March Bans Israeli Flags, Allows Palestinian Ones

Via The Washington Free Beacon

Washington gay pride parade is banning participants from brandishing Israeli flags, Israeli pride flags, or any “pro-Israel paraphernalia” during its event on Friday.

Yael Horowitz, a Jewish organizer of the D.C. Dyke March, said organizers had decided to ban “nationalist symbols,” including flags and banners that represent “nations that have specific oppressive tendencies.”

Palestinian flags would be allowed, however, the Forward reported. It was unclear if this was a tacit acknowledgment of Palestinians not having a true state. It was also unclear if organizers were aware of the lack of LGBT protections for gay Palestinians, including the illegality of male homosexual conduct in the Gaza Strip.

“Jewish stars and other identifications and celebrations of Jewishness (yarmulkes, talit, other expressions of Judaism or Jewishness) are welcome and encouraged,” Horowitz wrote in a Facebook message to marcher A.J. Campbell. “We do ask that participants not bring pro-Israel paraphernalia in solidarity with our queer Palestinian friends.”

A similar situation developed in 2017 when a Chicago lesbian march ejected several women for carrying gay Jewish pride flags. Some other marchers claimed the flags made them feel “unsafe” in keeping with the anti-Zionist sentiment of the event.

Read the entire article HERE.

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