What happens when a wave of antisemitism floods over the Western world?

 Well, the Guardian publishes an article about how antisemitic Orban is, of course.

 At this point this is as pathetic as predictable. Orban is doing his usual "Brussels and Soros is evil" routine (which is quite pathetic in its own right by the way), while The Guardian is trying to frame it as some sort of antisemitism -never mind that Orban and Bibi are the greatest of pals, the fact that Bibi also is pointing at Soros as some evil conspirator (I guess he is also an anti-semite), and finally forgetting that Jews are much safer in Hungary than in most of Western Europe. I dare not even mention the fact that the constant specter of Russian/Chinese bots, influencers deciding our elections is apparently not antisemitic, even though it is evoking the very same image of the evil outsider meddling with your internal affairs. (I am relieved that criticizing Weinstein is not anti-semitic, although this logic could also apply to him, too.)

Idiocy, double standards and willful blindness, while in Europe -and elsewhere- people are demonstrating "for" Hamas, chant "gas the Jews", "from river to the sea", and other idiocy, where the BBC and Corbyn is refusing to call Hamas a terrorist organization. But sure. It is Orban that we have an issue with when it comes to antisemitism. Can you be more stupid than this?

 Wait, what? We can now criticize the new Star Wars movies?? Now we can admit that those evil fans who criticized were not racist and sexist pigs and all?*

 

*Again, a few vocal morons do not make a toxic fandom, otherwise feminism, trans activists, and literally every other group of people more than ten individuals would be in great trouble. But they were useful to dismiss valid criticism, weren't they?

 

Oh, I forgot. We do not go that far. In true Orwellian fashion we never did like the new Star Wars sequels. Also, Ghostbusters 2016 wasn't really good, either.

This is normally what happens. For some mysterious reason the "progressive" parts of the media absolutely stands beside extremely flawed movies, TV series because of the message they are forcing, and are useful for propagating their own culture wars fighting the evil White Patriarchy. The quality is irrelevant, the message matters. (Usually the forced message is the reason for the sh... questionable quality anyhow.) Part of it is the nature of the 'access media', but a large chunk of it is activism.

Some time passes, there are new outrages, so it is then becomes safe to actually admit that the work in question is actually sh... not very good, and has nothing to do with the original franchise/work it was adapted from. Now it is time to push the new stuff (like the new Snow White(ish), or the planned diverse Viking live action How to Train Your Dragon.) So the circle continues.

I guess it is The Wheel of Time's and the Rings of Power's turn now. I am sure we will see some articles in the mighty Guardian saying that the series strayed very far from the source material, and the character of Galadriel, is in fact, bad. You know, the very thing they called you a racist, sexist pig for.

Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, the issue of domestic violence, and the motte-and-bailey fallacy at work

It is interesting how even the wokest papers change their tones without acknowledging how they jumped the gun in the past.

It seems like in the Depp-Heard soap opera it was the woman who was abusive, not the man -hardly the stereotype The Guardian likes to discuss, but something unsurprising if you read a little bit about domestic violence in peer reviewed papers.

In the past they were quite happy to condemn Depp as a wife-beater based on hearsay. (There are a lot of articles which take his guilt -or any other men's guilt in domestic violence or rape cases- as a fact; you can search for them for your heart's desire. Start with Mattess Girl if you want to see something really surreal -and people are still defending her.)

#Believeallwomen, right? Oh, wait, now it is a right-wing trap. We never said that. Exept we still do… And yes, I do understand that a couple of people's statements cannot be used to indict a whole group -fourth wave feminists, in this case- except if the group in question does not actually stand up against these individuals. When that does not happen you may start to think that these statements do reflect on the group as a whole. Normally the most vocal fourth wave feminists do not actually disavow outrageous statements made in the name of feminism.

 

It is the perfect example of the motte-and-bailey fallacy: make an outrageous, indefensible claim, and then fall back to an uncontroversial one, claiming you never thought otherwise. (This is when the whole "we did not say that, and we are not responsible for what others have said" routine comes into play.)

The truth remains: somehow lately the Guardian talks about how difficult it is to determine who is telling the truth in these cases (when it is not blaming the victim, of course), while, as mentioned, they were quite ready to declare guilt previously based on hearsay. It is unfortunate for the paper that in this particular case it is really not that hard to determine potential guilt from the evidence presented... it is not merely he-said-she-said: Depp has testimonies, CCTV evidence and doctor's statements at his disposal, and Heard seemed to be quite irrational during her testimonies, going as far as to seemingly fabricating stories of past abuse by Depp.

Now that the evidence is weighted against Heard, now it is suddenly difficult to determine who the guilty party is. Now we do not believe the victim (Depp in this case), possibly because he has a penis and we only believe what women say, since women, as we all know, never lie about these matters. (They do not lie especially when they have something to gain from lying as we know, for example during divorce proceedings… Women are like that. Honest to the fault.) The same thing was going on in the Hungarian News portal, Index.hu. From the absolute certainly of Depp's guilt we arrived to the "well, they both are abusers, it was a toxic relationship" in a couple of weeks. The narrative changes subtly but the overall message does not.

Nice. I guess we can count this as progress.

Gender pay gap and the case of who gets to the top

The narrative about gender pay gap has changed subtly over the last year or so; finally the flimsy argument not supported by actual facts, that "because of Patriarchy women get paid less for the same amount of work" has seem to be dropped; it's nice because literally nothing supports it. (But if you did not know: we have pocket money pay gap, too - again the evils of men suppressing women from an early age.)

The ONR's figures show that between the ages of 22 and 29 women earn 1.1% more than men of the same age, and between 30 and 39 women earn 0.2% more than men in the same age group. (Of course this is not a problem worth correcting.) This pay gap reduces and then reverses around the average age of having children. Yes, overall men earn more but that is because the pay gap flips before the higher earning years. Employers, however, are being gender blind on this issue, and simply basing decisions on productivity and output. Feminists can describe this as unarguably unfair and hence slander men as sexist or even misogynist but it is a grey area depending on your perspective on fairness. For instance is it fair to discriminate against someone who has more experience and fewer career breaks simply because they are a man?

When you compare apples to apples -same experience, same qualifications, IT companies (which supposed to be the epitomes of "Da Patriarchy", with all those spotty little nerds who break out in sweat whenever they see a woman) show no gender pay gap.

So finally the narrative is shifting; now even The Guardian admits (in contrast to previous articles) that the situation is not as clear-cut as women getting paid less for the same work. (It took about two decades, but finally data and facts overtake ideology. There is hope still. Next you're telling me that Climate Change is real...) The sneering condescension is actually ramped up, but there you go. It's somewhat ironic that finally they are getting closer to the "other" narrative, and admitting that the situation is more complex than the identity politics' response of "women are downtrodden", and yet being more hateful and confrontative. I think it's understandable (and even necessary) since they cannot possibly admit that "the other side" might have been right about something all along.

So what does it leave us with? Our feminist now scornfully explains (you can see this as "womansplaining") that the solutions should include societal changes - the very things that "the others" have said, since this is what the data suggested. Just to make it clear: she is explaining something that was constantly brought up to feminists as an alternative explanation to the disparity of pay between genders... in a tone that suggests that everyone else but her was stupid. I really do think it's a great example of the hitherto unidentified, but not unobserved womansplaining.

Yes we know. We kept telling you the very same thing while you called us misogynists. 

So there are a couple of issues here. Career choices - a difficult proposition. A woman who has no family has the same pay as a man. But can you negatively discriminate others so that you promote women who do have children? It is something that does need to be discussed; but the angry, straight-out hostile tone is not helpful -or even warranted. Interestingly these authors are looking at women in isolation when it comes to career choices and pay, instead of looking at them as part of a family unit. By taking a career break, they do impact their own earning potential; however the other member of this family unit can actually make up for the shortfall. Unless you gimp them as well, because "they're men, and they should also earn less even though they have more experience and did not take career breaks". In this case the whole family suffers the loss of earning, you know. Unintended consequence which can be actually foreseen. 

The author of this Guardian article also argues for gender neutral recruitment; which is a very good thing, but it can certainly backfire spectacularly. She also calls for encouraging women to enter different fields; but how exactly are you going to force them to do so? Are you going to set up quotas for mining engineers, for example? Sorry, Rosie, I know you want to be a teacher, but you will need to enrol in astrophysics to fill out the quota? Like it or not, genders do differ, and men and women in general might be inclined to gravitate towards different fields. It does not mean that a particular woman cannot be a fighter pilot or a coal miner, but in general women tend to do other types of jobs. A lot of which is underpaid, I might add. This is not a gender issue we're talking about; it's a societal issue. Our society in general seems to reward other things that most of us see important; lawyers, economists, pop stars are making dis-proportionally more than people who wash the bottom of your grandmother in the hospital. We should definitely make sure that our carers and teachers are paid better; but the identity politics really poisons this conversation.

The other issue constantly brought up about gender inequality is the relative low representation of women in the top management positions (and in politics). Certain people like to look at it as the Patriarchy oppressing women; as if Joe the Septic Tank Cleaner might benefit anything from an Oxbridge educated white guy getting a CEO position at a hedge fund. (I guess they all know each other from the weekly secret penis-meetings where they discuss everything they need to oppress women). 

It is certainly a possibility, although I never got an invite, so I'm feeling a bit left out. However there are some minor issues with this. For example a LOT of high management positions are being filled out with women in the civil service, academia, etc - and there are more and more female politicians, too. So it seems like the trend is changing already. Perhaps people should just wait until this naturally equalises in reaction to the affirmative actions taken over the last two decades. (After all, women already are represented in higher numbers in universities... and yet no cries can be heard about gender imbalances.) 

Another intriguing possibility presents itself by simply taking a look at these positions and what it takes to get there. We do know that people in high positions often express psychopathic traits. And by "often" I mean one CEO in five does. Which is way more than in the general population. This is really not surprising; to get to the top you have to be absolutely driven and be absolutely without any scruples. You don't get these promotions by being passively promoted, as these authors in The Guardian seem to think; according to their wisdom you are promoted to a high management position on the basis of the possession of a penis. The truth is somewhat different. You have to be a one hundred percent dedicated individual who is willing to put in an insane amount of work, and walk over anyone if necessary -in other word, well, you have to be a psychopath. (Or something close to it.) Even if you reached a moderate success, and possess enough money to invest and live off comfortably with your family without having to work another day, these people still put in sixteen hours a day to get even higher up.

You don't get these positions by playing nice, and doing your work, climbing up the ladder one step at a time; you have to elbow yourself in, and destroy all your rivals (professionally only usually, but personally, too, should it become necessary). 

But perhaps women are underrepresented in the higher management positions partially because fewer women are willing to engage in these struggles; fewer women want or can put in fourteen hour workdays, and put up with the merciless contest leading to the top. Very few people are willing to do that - regardless of what their genitals look like. What I think is that there are a little bit more men than women who are competitive and ruthless enough to succeed; that's all. We are talking about the very edge of the outliers on the bell curve here. What feminists and other mostly arts and humanities majors tend to forget that we are biological beings; results of millions of years of evolution. This includes our gender roles as well; a hundred years of societal conditioning will not erase millions of years of savage struggle for survival. Men ARE evolved to be more aggressive; its foolish to think this can all be forgotten because you played with gender neutral toys as a toddler. 

There is also a different aspect of the higher management positions: there are really not a lot of these around, so statistics will not be very useful. For every one of these high-earners you get thousands of underlings, so a very small imbalance can absolutely skew the statistics. Ironically the feminists are right that these people make way too much; but it's not a gender issue.

I'm not sure what the solution can be to address these issues. Sudden society engineering moves will not be very successful. You cannot mandate gender quotas only in certain positions (unless you're willing to do that for others as well- coal miners and construction workers come to mind), and you certainly cannot discriminate against men  without a serious backlash. You can't mandate more women in leading positions, either; vagina-quotas will not fly well with corporations, and ironically you will entrench the position of women as the "lesser sex", since obviously they need help to climb up. You can only encourage more women to enter the fight for those position. But how exactly are you going to do that? How fair would it be to handicap males or help females to get to higher management? First of all you really, really need to answer the question: are there fewer females in these positions because it's a boy's club, or is it something else, some other factor at play? (Such as the potential explanations above.) 

The sorry state of journalism- the Weinstein affair

So there's this creep producer who probably engaged in activities most people would describe as "despicable". Let me start by stating this is not about the guy and what he (probably) did. It's about how it's being handled.

The jury is still out (well, it should be; after all the whole issue is pretty new, and we don't have all the information yet), but obviously the mob justice is the best justice; everyone is either condemning him or distancing themselves from him. Fair enough; this is what you get if you're rich and visible, and overstep certain boundaries; suddenly everyone wants to make sure they are not mistaken for your friend. (It's kind of funny that nobody seems to be discussing the systemic abuse of power in the entertainment industry... This is the best opportunity to talk about it, yet it seems like our perp here is made out to be "one bad apple", rather than the norm.)

Anyhow.

Enter: The Guardian.

Obviously we need to know which actresses Tweeted about this issue; it's a fundamental part of the story. After all if we don't hear what Winslet or Nunn has to say in 142 characters, we don't know the basics, do we? Let's repeat the same paragraphs on these people's -often baseless- opinions in every single article we write, so much so that a plagiarism detection program would have a hard time separating them from each other. This is what journalists do, right? The news become irrelevant; what other famous people say becomes the news itself, which is worth repeating almost verbatim in every single article you publish.


The other, even more fundamental part is the constant identity politics. Let's ask 20 male actors who worked with him for their comments. After all since they all have a penis (each, I think), they should be asked. And when they don't respond, let's imply there's something deeper going on there other than people unwilling to get into this cesspit of gossip. But the implication here is that men need to speak up or it means they condone this douche's behaviour. (Which, let me stress, is not unique in the entertainment industry, so nobody should be surprised.)


Interestingly when certain right wingers demand Muslims apologise for acts of terror, suddenly the grouping of people based on one shared feature becomes intolerance and racism by the Guardian, too. (Which is, let's add it.)


It must be really weird trying to figure out how to report on stuff based on identity politics... is the person in question male? Female? White? Black? When does criticising a Jewish person equal anti-antisemitism, and when it isn't? If it's Soros, any criticism is definitely Antisemitism, right? It must be. (Which is not to say the Hungarian government's increasingly hysterical anti-Soros rhetoric is any way justified. It's just not Antisemitic.) When it's about sexual assault, then it becomes tricky, after all it seems like in this case it's fine to put him in pillory; criticising a person does not mean implied hatred of Jews.

The Guardian, the refugee crisis and Hungary -again

The current editorial of the Guardian really shows something incredible: a complete 180 from what they have been preaching before.

They claim the solution has been laid out for this crisis, and then list the following:
1. pan-European resettlement efforts
2. strengthening of the EU's external borders
3. to make a deal with Turkey
4. negotiated repatriation of economic migrants who are not entitled for asylum


Well, guess what. Point 1 is absolutely unenforcable; no country who is not volunteering can be forced, and no refugee who is unwilling to receive less benefits can be forced into this arrangement. The Schengen borders make sure of that. As soon as you drop your refugee in Hungary or Bulgaria, they'd get on the road again towards Germany. (As they did the first time around, instead of claiming asylum at their points of entry, like the law requires. If they had not respected the law then, they'd probably ignore it again.)

But points 2-4... really? This was exactly what Orban said for which he was called an extreme-right wing leader, a xenophobe, and a Nazi. The Guardian -and the rest of the Western media- was very critical of everyone who dared to suggest that perhaps the borders needed to be strengthened, that perhaps we should talk to Turkey (if we're fucking up countries in the Middle East), and perhaps there ARE people who are not war refugees, but economic migrants. To this day this is a contentious point; this is the first time I've ever seen the Guardian admitting to this possibility that not all refugee are fleeing war an persecution.

This leaves us where, exactly? Orban -who is not exactly your model politician, and would be quite nice if was voted out of power- got a tremendous boost of prestige for the way he handled the crisis. (The only political figure in the whole of EU who did not run around like a chicken with his head cut off. How scary is this thought?)
The Guardian essentially vindicated him. His suggestions are accepted -but at at time when it's way too late. You can close the barn door, but the horse has already bolted.

The Guardian talks about bridges to be mended, yet it does not acknowledge that it had not only slandered Orban over this year, but the whole of Hungary, depicting the population as the collection of some backwards xenophobic barbarians, saying this flat out, or simply implying. How do you expect cooperation after this?

The "EU" is not a rich block; the Central and Eastern European member states cannot deal with an influx of unemployable migrants (according to the Germans only 10% if the refugee population is employable), even IF there were jobs to be filled. However, unemployment and poverty is high; you can't expect these states to add extra burden. So that is a blatantly untrue statement... another little slip in the truth. Yes, it would be desirable if you could convince these countries, however, the way they were treated (Greece and Hungary in particular) will make sure that they will not be open to persuasion.

So again -we have too little, too late. Even The Guardian realized not all was perfect in their own little world, and now it proposed solutions to a problem that has increased in proportion hundredfold since these solutions were proposed by those evil Nazis, The Guardian now parrots.

Separate moves do make things worse -if only the Western media's and political establishment's refusal to face reality had not forced countries to act separately. Good job, guys. We can always trust you to do the right thing after you have exhausted every other choice.