Hello, I’m Daisy Cousens. Welcome to This Week in Social Justice.
INTRO
This week’s biggest and baddest social justice fails include Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez and her teary speech at the C40 World Mayors
Summit, the New York Times review of the movie Joker and why it’s
top brass cringe, and depending on how long I feel like talking about
the first two topics, we may even get time for a bonus topic. So! Let’s
get started.
But! While I have your attention, hit that subscribe button if you
haven’t already. I’m sure a few of you have watched two or three of
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have you. Okay, let’s go!
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or Red Cortez as I enjoy
calling her, has pulled out her most emotive rhetoric for her speech
at the C40 World Mayors Summit in Copenhagen on October 11 th .
During this speech on climate change, she plucked at the heartstrings
of every social justice warrior in the world with talk of her dreams of
motherhood
Is it just me, or did Red Cortez go to the Christine Blasey
Ford School of Crying on Cue?
Anyway, Red also had this to say
Okay, so what happened in Puerto Rico and the Bahamas with
Hurricanes Maria and Dorian is horrendous. But true to form, Red
Cortez has taken that and turned it into a racial point. And an
inaccurate one at that. If she really wants to pin all natural disasters
nowadays to climate change, has she forgotten the California forest
fires?
How about she pays a visit to Australia, where we have been dealing
with one of the worst droughts in recorded history that some people
are attributing to climate change, which is predominantly affecting
our white and male farmers who are descendants of British
colonisers who were not very kind to Indigenous communities?
Facts are important, Red! I swear, only she could somehow turn
natural disasters into an anti-Western society dog whistle.
Okay, so there are two things you have to remember about Red and
her rhetoric. One, while she sounds very very definite and
authoritative, what she is presenting is simply one narrative; the
alarmist narrative that requires so-called radical action B ROLL
But the thing is, it’s not true that there’s no middle road when it
comes to climate change. While we don’t hear much from them in
the media, not all climate scientists buy this “climate emergency”
radical action narrative.
When Red talks about scientific consensus, what she’s referring to is
that most scientists agree that man made global warming is a thing.
However, there is varied opinion among these qualified experts as to
how we deal with it. That’s the key point here.
So, while Red and Greta Thunberg and those like them relentlessly
say listen to the scientists, and admonish those they think are
unqualified to talk about climate change, they are not taking their
own advice. Red Cortez, by her own standards, is vastly unqualified
to talk about climate change, and as for listening to the scientists,
well, you can’t say that and then only listen to the scientists you like.
The second thing you need to remember is that there is a reason Red
Cortez and her cronies present the alarmist narrative as bona fide
fact; disregarding all other opinion. They see climate change as an
opportunity to radically change global economies, by presenting vast
government overreach and massive global and domestic
redistribution of wealth as the only way to stop the death of all of
humanity.
And of course, the technical term for that large scale government
action is
Their way of seducing ordinary people into agreeing to relinquish
their personal freedoms in this way is by using words like emergency
and crisis and think of the children etc. They also present socialism as
some sort of recipe for Utopia, even though it has led to starvation
and ruin every time it has been tried. A little bit of cognitive
dissonance there.
For the record, what I’m saying isn’t a right-wing conspiracy theory.
Like I’ve said a million times, I am a climate centrist. These radical
climate alarmists are more than happy to admit that they are using
climate change as a means initiate a socialist uprising.
The Democratic Socialists of America, which is Alexandria Ocasio-
Cortez’ parent organisation, are perfectly open about their desire to
do this, so are the UK socialists party, and there are a number of
journalists who are also floating the idea. If you want the full details
of who has said what, I made a video on this, and I have included it in
the video description.
In addition to these open socialists, Red’s ex-chief of staff admitted
that the Green New Deal was a way of changing the entire economy,
stating in these words in an interview with the Washington Post, “Do
you guys think of it as a climate thing? Because we really think of it
as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”
And yes, even Red admits to it
So, here’s the thing. While Red Cortez and her cronies may act like
they’re telling the truth, and imply that everyone smart and shiny
agrees with them, and that this is all for the good of the
underprivileged, they’re telling bald faced lies. This is all about
power, and silencing dissent, to create what they believe is the best
model for society.
Too bad that particular model of society has infallibly led to
destruction, misery, and death every single time. Huge social justice
fail to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on this one.
The new movie Joker starring the incomparable Joaquin Phoenix is
out, and it has been causing quite a stir. And before we go any
further, I promise, I am not going to reveal any spoilers, this is a no
spoiler video. Anyway, I saw the movie, and it was absolutely
fantastic.
Without giving anything away, it is an excellent reflection on a
society that disregards the mentally ill, and the inevitable and tragic
consequences of that. Joaquin Phoenix gave a sublime performance,
and he deserves to win all of the awards. To give a brief summary of
his character, again, without giving anything away, he plays Arthur
Fleck; a man in his 30s living in 1981 Gotham City, which is
representative of New York.
He describes himself as a mentally ill loner, he’s from a poor family,
and is barely scraping by, financially, physically, and mentally. He is
the victim of verbal and physical bullying throughout the film, which
he just smiles and takes…that is, until he doesn’t. I recommend you
all go see it, it’s so good.
But, despite this very very clearly being a film about mental illness,
poverty, classism, and the consequences of societal neglect, a
number of the reviews were distinctly social justicey. Particularly this
one from the New York Times by Lawrence Ware, entitled, The Real
Threat of ‘Joker’ Is Hiding in Plain Sight”.
Sounds fairly innocuous, until you read the tag line, which states,
“What the film wants to say — about mental illness or class divisions
in society — is not as interesting as what it accidentally says about
whiteness.”
Whiteness??!
So, what is whiteness? Well, from what I could gather in my
research, whiteness is the cultural, historical and sociological aspects
of people identified as white, and the social construction of
"whiteness" as an ideology tied to social status. Now, I am aware
there is a whole lot of history that goes with this “whiteness”, which
I’m not going to go into, that‘s a whole nother video.
However, I’m sure at certain points in time it has been very relevant
in explaining the complex social dynamics between groups. But how
did that make it into Lawrence Ware’s reading of a film about a
mentally ill loner in a 1980s representation of New York City, which,
while there are black characters and white characters, makes
absolutely no reference to or comment on race?!
Well, Ware rationalises this by saying that while the filmmakers may
not have realised it, READ B ROLL “it is essentially a depiction of what
happens when white supremacy is left unchecked. It shows the
delusions that many white men have about their place in society and
the brutality that can result when that place is denied.”
Okay, anybody who has seen the film will realise how entirely
insensitive this comment is. It proves that Ware is full of bitterness
and anger, and is looking for something to complain about. I mean,
for goodness sake, Arthur Fleck struggles terribly in every way
imaginable…yet Lawrence Ware somehow turns him into a racist
oppressor? Are you kidding me? Anyway, the review goes on to say,
“The fact that the Joker is a white man is central to the film’s plot. A
black man in Gotham City (really, New York) in 1981 suffering from
the same mysterious mental illnesses as Fleck would be homeless
and invisible. He wouldn’t be turned into a public figure who could
incite an entire city to rise up against the wealthy.”
“And though Fleck says he often feels invisible, had he been black, he
truly would have been — except, of course, when he came into
contact with the police. They’d be sure to see him.”
Yes, that was most likely true in 1981 New York. But one; how on
earth is that relevant to this film? It has zero to do with the plot or
the themes. And two; it’s not real! It’s a film based in a fictional city
about a comic book character. Why on earth is Ware using it to
exercise what appears to be his own resentment and toxic identity
politics?
Ware is simply griping that his preferred political narrative is absent
from this film. This insistence that everything has to be about them is
a common trait among the identity obsessed regressive left of all
ethnicities and types. They are so narcissistic.
Everything has to be about their identity, whether it’s black, brown,
LGBT, female, and everything in between. That’s one of the reasons I
hate identity politics; it is inherently self-involved without having any
self-awareness.
The review concludes with, “Whiteness may not have been on the
filmmakers’ minds when they made “Joker,” but it is the hidden
accomplice that fosters the violence onscreen.” Well, I can tell you
one thing; whiteness was definitely not on the filmmakers minds
when they made Joker.
Somehow, Lawrence Ware has managed to pull something from the
film that is, to the average observer, simply not in the film. And yes, I
know interpreting art is very subjective and dependent on the
responder, but in this case, he really is making a giant, gargantuan
leap, and only for the sake of politics, not art. Enormous social justice
fail right here.
Bonus topic! We have a bonus topic this week. In a journal article
that has confounded even me, University of Washington professor
Holly M Barker has asserted that Spongebob Squarepants, the title
character in the beloved children’s cartoon of the same name, is a
racist colonizer.
Published in the University of Hawaii press, Holly has somehow
found a link between a cartoon sponge who lives in a pineapple
under the sea in a place called Bikini Bottom, and the violent
colonialism that has oppressed so many people before him. The
abstract from the article, which is entitled Unsettling SpongeBob and
the Legacies of Violence on Bikini Bottom, states READ B ROLL
““Billions of people around the globe are well-acquainted with
SpongeBob Squarepants and the antics of the title character and his
friends on Bikini Bottom. By the same token, there is an absence of
public discourse about the whitewashing of violent American military
activities through SpongeBob’s occupation and reclaiming of the
bottom of Bikini Atoll’s lagoon.
“SpongeBob Squarepants and his friends play a role in normalizing
the settler colonial takings of Indigenous lands while erasing the
ancestral Bikinian people from their nonfictional homeland,”
Okay, there is a good chance, just putting it out there, that this is
fake. Like, it’s so outrageously hysterical to make this claim that she
could very well be a right wing troll trying to paint the academic left
in a bad light. Who knows.?
But we truly are in clown world if allegedly serious academics, who
have a huge effect on public discourse and are responsible for
shaping the minds of the young and impressionable, are spending
serious amounts of time writing about how Spongebob Squarepants
is a racist coloniser. Massive social justice fail. Holy wow.