2025/09/13

Google Weeps While Running The Table; The behemoth continues roguish exploitation of its users — Is Google seeking to indenture users as data slaves?

As ¡No Pasarán! fights for its reinstatement, Damian Bennett presents an up-to-date picture of Google and the tech giants.
Oh. Wait a minute.
  • Google Cloud Chief Details How Search Giants Is Making Billions Monetizing Its AI Products September 9, 2025
    “We’ve made billions using AI already,” said [Google’s cloud chief Thomas] Kurian, speaking at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology Conference in San Francisco. Kurian said that Google Cloud’s backlog of customer demand is growing faster than its revenue. “Our backlog is now at $106 billion — it is growing faster than our revenue,” he said. “More than 50% of it will convert to revenue over the next two years.”
Apparently Big Blue Tech is both winning and losing the AI Great Turning. 

Meanwhile Google continues roguish exploitation of its users.
In pursuit of profit (not a bad thing) Google seeks to indenture users as data slaves (definitely a bad thing). "Don't be evil." Well that's long gone by the board. Perhaps it's time to lean, lean hard into Google 'bad news' when discussing its furtive ¡No Pasarán! censure enforcement. Google will never be shamed into doing the right thing, but it certainly doesn't want more attention drawn to 'bad news', i.e., reshape ¡No Pasarán! censure from an instance of abuse to part of a larger, general, historic and continuing pattern of user abuse. 




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2025/09/12

What News Does the Front Page of the "International New York Times" Feature? Nothing About the Charlie Kirk Murder But a Story About a Provocateur Rapper


Are you familiar with the phrase "You do not hate the media enough"? In case you didn't think the sentence is evergreen, check out the front page of the international edition of the New York Times today.

Besides the fact that The NYT’s Obituary for Charlie Kirk Is an Absolute Disgrace (via Instapundit's Sarah Hoyt) and in contrast to the U.S. edition of the Times, none of the stories on the front page of the International New York Times Friday are remotely concerned with the Charlie Kirk assassination. (The news of the Wednesday death of the founder of Turning Point USA apparently arrived too late for Thursday's paper [printed in London], which is odd, since several European papers [published an hour ahead of the UK] — which are all shock-full of pieces on a young American they barely devoted a single line to before Wednesday — did manage to have articles on the tragedy in their Thursday editions.)

What is even more stunning is that none of the stories on the front page of today's paper are even on the "front page" of the NYTimes website. 

Indeed, none of them is directly associated to yesterday's (or the day before yesterday's) events. 

Only the briefest of mentions about "A young voice on the right" in the top left corner of the front page, above the newspaper's title, points to an article inside.  Although the INYT does manage to place said article not on page 17 or on page 33, but on page 2, this is simply the INYT's traditional location for obituaries — here are the four stories that the editors in London found more important than the TPUSA founder's assassination. (George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, and Jordan Neely never had it this bad.) 

Related: RIP Charlie Kirk — This Is What Is Bound to Happen When You Constantly Refer to Your Adversaries as "Fascists" and as "Threats to Democracy"  
"My liberal friends are completely oblivious about how radicalizing the last week has been for tens of millions of normal Americans; Zero clue" by Robert Sterling
• "I Feel like Stopping Everything": France's Equivalent of Charlie Kirk, Erik Tegnér, in Tears over the Death Threats He Has Received 

• The NYT’s Obituary for Charlie Kirk Is an Absolute Disgrace (via Instapundit's Sarah Hoyt)

Here are the four articles:

• Russia bets against the West, and it's winning — Sure, this is about the Kremlin's recent drones over the Polish border (Drone Barrage Over Poland Was a Test for NATO, and the U.S. in the American edition), but traditionally the Andrew E. Kramer piece could just as well have appeared somewhere inside the newspaper.

• A logistical headache for Brazil — you would think that a front-page news story about Brazil at this time would concern the show trial and the conviction by a (kangaroo?) court of Jair Bolsonaro for challenging the results of an election — to an astounding 27 years behind bars; but no — it's about an event — COP30 — not due until… eight weeks from now! (In the U.S. edition, Somini Sengupta and Max Bearak's piece comes with a longer title [Brazil Invited the World to the Amazon. It’s Become a Big Headache] — here is a much more fun story about the lack of hotels for UN guests.)

• Doubting a two-state solution by Michelle Goldberg — The piece in the left-hand column of the INYT's front page (These Peace Negotiators Say It’s Time to Give Up on the Two-State Solution in the U.S. edition) is invariably a column from the Opinion section.

• The jewel (sic) of today's front page is entitled Ready to cut loose, singer struts back to her pop roots — which all of you will admit is a title enticing to the extreme (FYI, that was satire). In the U.S. edition, Joe Coscarelli's article You’ve Got It All Wrong About Doja Cat about the "singer, rapper and provocateur" doesn't appear until… Section AR Page 61! 

All this makes it something of a relief to discover Ross Douthat's friendly column inside, Charlie Kirk Embodied Mass-Culture Conservatism:

Charlie Kirk, murdered on Wednesday talking to college kids at Utah Valley University, built his career and reputation organizing a different kind of campus conservatism — fun-loving, masculine, rowdy, mainstream, even faintly cool. He seemed like a guy who would be popular on campus, who would be invited to the good parties, who would have friends outside of political activism, who wouldn’t just show up in a bow tie plotting how to take over the Young Republicans. 

 … But Kirk didn’t abandon the nerdy-controversialist side of campus conservatism; he tried to embrace it and live it out, as well, showing up on his college tours ready to debate and argue publicly with anyone, liberal or far left or further right.

Update: The following day, in the international edition's weekend (Saturday-Sunday) edition, still nothing on Charlie Kirk until page 6 (although the three articles devoted to the founder of TPUSA there do admittedly take up the full page), in contrast to Melena Ryzik's article on the front page — you can hardly make this up — about a performance of Waiting for Godot with Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter of “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” fame. 

Now take a look at the left side of the international edition's front page: in the part reserved for an Opinion column, the London editors have featured Brazil Just Succeeded Where America Failed (in the international version, Filipe Campante and Steven Levitsky's column is called, simply, America could learn from Brazil), which was hailed to the heavens in a Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey post ("We failed to protect our democracy"). Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds links to Nate Fischer's reaction: What Brazil's Leftists did to Jair Bolsonaro "is what [America's Leftists] would have done to Trump and his supporters if he had lost. We cannot risk letting these people take power again."

NB: While we're fighting to recover No Pasarán from Google's pernicious and gratuitous ban of a blog of 21 years with 14,000 posts, I am blogging here, at No Pasarán's sister blog.

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2025/09/11

"I Feel like Stopping Everything": France's Equivalent of Charlie Kirk, Erik Tegnér, in Tears over the Death Threats He Has Received

 
Under the threats of leftist thugs, "I have myself felt like stopping" admits Nicolas Conquer on Europe 1 (at 5:52-6:33 and 12:22-13:41 in the video above, at 7:00-7:44 in the video below). "But after the shock and the disbelief, I must take up the flame." And the ROF spokesman predicts an army of Charlie Kirks.

The main guest was France's equivalent of Charlie — he is an outspoken conservative who started the magazine Frontières in addition to being of the same age and a declared admirer of Charlie Kirk who interviewed him last summer and was in talks to invite the TPUSA founder to a debate at La Sorbonne. But now Erik Tegnér confesses that he is scared and that he "feels like stopping everything."

Erik Tegnér réagit à la mort de Charlie Kirk : "C’était un modèle"

Sep 11, 2025 #news #trump #charliekirk
Christine Kelly revient, de 11h30 à 13h, sans concession, sur tous les sujets qui font l'actualité. Une émission durant laquelle VOUS avez la parole. Vous pouvez réagir en appelant le 01.80.20.39.21 (appel non surtaxé) ou sur les réseaux sociaux d'Europe 1 (Facebook , X et Instagram). Jeudi 11 septembre, elle évoque l'assasinat de Charlie Kirk. #news #trump #charliekirk #usa

"J'ai envie de tout arrêter" : Erik Tegnér en larmes se confie sur les menaces de mort qu’il reçoit 

On Europe 1, one viewer had the following to say: 
Yet another confirmation that the left has become, in France as in the United States, the party of hatred, intolerance, obscurantism, and unreason. They are incapable of attacking you on the substance, on your ideas, so they attack you ad hominem, psychologically, and physically. The left is the party of intellectual terrorism; today, it is the party of terrorism, pure and simple. RIP Charlie Kirk, for the values ​​of freedom of speech that you defended for all of us.

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"I thought of President Washington praying in the snow for the sake of America": Where I was on Sept. 11th


A day after Charlie Kirk was brutally gunned down at an event to promote debate, discussion, and a measure of harmony with people who have nothing but contempt for America and Western values, it is time to commemorate the anniversary of 9-11.

In that perspective, we bring you the reminiscences of a woman who had moved to Washington just two weeks before the 911 attacks. Edy Iversen Martin-Prevel was a former Public Affairs director in Washington DC. She currently works in Paris, France, as an Ambassador for Peace. 

Where I was on September 11th 

by Edy Iversen 

Starting Over 
Edy Iversen 
September 2002 

On March 3rd, 2002, I commemorated the one-year anniversary of the death of my beloved husband Tom. There is not a day or a minute that goes by that I do not think of him or am reminded of his tender loving character. More than anything else the death of someone you love teaches you about the incredible value of your own life. 

You can no longer take for granted even one moment. Small insignificant things make you weep uncontrollably. The littlest kindness can render you inconsolable for hours. You can never watch the news again with the same eyes. War tears your heart out. Even disciplining your children becomes almost impossible. You want to give them everything just to take the pain away from their heart.

In spite of the agony and loneliness of death, life goes on and so must you. It is actually a time of tremendous opportunity for many people if only they can realize it and can go beyond their sadness. It is a second chance in life and time for a new beginning.

In the past because of marriage and children, we are many times forced to sacrifice our own personal God given gifts to raise our children, to pay the bills and to take care of the ones we love. But death is a tremendous opportunity to re-create that someone we somehow neglected for a long time and that is ourselves.

When my husband died, I was so overwhelmed with grief I could barely function. He was my whole world. Everything I looked at reminded me of him. It was unbearable. I got down on my knees and asked God, what next? How can I pick myself up from this misery and go forward? And I heard a voice that said, "Go to Washington D.C."

Though I had worked in DC several times over the past 17 years it was usually just for a special event and only for a couple of days at a time. But to move my whole life, future and son to an unknown place, especially a huge city full of traffic, seemed impossible to me. I had spent the last seventeen years in two small towns in South Dakota and Florida where my worst fear was hitting a deer or a senior citizen crossing the road. Yet, I knew it was fate. So, to the disbelief of family and friends, I followed my intuition and off I went with my fourteen-year-old son and began a new chapter of my life.

I realized when I got here that God had prepared everything for me already. I found a very nice home in Maryland that I could share with a woman whose husband was working overseas temporarily. Her daughter also was the leader of our church youth group. Within weeks our home became "teenage central" to the joy and delight of my son. He was adopted into a household of friends almost overnight. We also found a great school with a baseball coach who took a special liking to my son. He helped in so many ways to encourage him to go on with his life after losing his best buddy, his father. I found a job in Public Relations in the non-profit sector. This included working at the Capitol and organizing major conferences for leaders in the DC area.

Less than two weeks after my arrival in Washington, the Pentagon was almost destroyed, and the Twin Towers were decimated. I was terrified. Who wasn’t? But more than fear for my own life, I was scared for the life of my country and important leaders that were sacrificing their own lives every day to maintain the freedoms we cherish here. I knew I had to do something to protect our nation.

In the chill of winter, I went to the Capitol every day with my handy legislative directory and prayed at the steps of the halls of Congress. I read the biographies of our legislators and leaders. As I prayed over each picture my teardrops kissed their faces.

The past had provided me with the incredible opportunity to work with so many conscientious Congressman and woman over the years. The thought of anything happening to the leaders of this country and our historic Capitol was unfathomable to me. In spite of the media hype, I had oftentimes seen firsthand the selflessness of our elected officials, their overburdened schedules, the public sacrifices of their families and personal lives to insure the preservation of the "land of the free and home of the brave". In one fell swoop of terror everything could be lost.

On New Year’s Day, I went to the White House, stood behind it’s iron gates and besieged God for the protection of our President, his family and our nation. I heard somewhere that God cannot deny the tears of a mother’s heart. I thought of President Washington praying in the snow for the sake of America, having only an army of beaten and defeated men. So much blood, sweat and tears had been shed for this country. I felt so helpless as did most Americans. This was all I could think to do to personally stop this reign of terror.

Within four months of my relocation, I helped to coordinate three major historic conferences. The first was an Interreligious and International Conference that brought over 450 world leaders together from different nations and different religions for the sake of Global Peace. The highlight of the conference was a beautiful bridge ceremony between warring countries and leaders. To see a very important Israeli Rabbi and a Muslim Imam embrace with tears gave hope to even the most cynical of the group and provided a vision that peace can be a reality in our lifetime.

Next, I worked on a series of International Leadership Conferences that were conducted in almost every state in America. These brought together leaders to work for the sake of peace. At the conferences we appointed 120 Ambassadors for Peace to work on the social and moral problems of each individual state.

And finally, I found myself in the midst of organizing a prayer luncheon for the current global situation with over 150 religious leaders of all faiths praying together for the sake of the world. I felt my husband looking down and smiling from Heaven when I was working on this event and I knew his spirit was with me. It was a profound experience. 

All this happened after thinking my life was over when my husband died? What possibly could be worth living for after someone you love is gone? I guess the powers that be knew something I didn’t. I realized that in spite of my own tragedy, there was a suffering greater than mine and that somehow through trying to alleviate the misery of God, my heart could be healed in the process. 

Sometimes suffering can be a great friend and teacher if you don’t let it embitter you. It can be the catalyst to bring you to a higher and deeper place and to realize who you really are and what you are made of. In the process, I have developed a new level of gratitude, hope and patience. And I look on my "so-called" life as a new beginning to be able to contribute in a way I never could before. 

Recently I saw a little boy in a wheelchair with a crippling disease who wrote beautiful poetry. Even in the midst of pain he could still give and comfort others. I have learned by giving to others, the pain grows less and less each day. I am a peace now with my loss, because through it I have gained much more than I ever realized. A year ago, I could never imagine I would smile again, laugh or think of anyone else but myself. But little by little I am finding my way. If you too are walking this lonely road, I reach out my hand and heart to you. One day the pain will lessen, and the sun’s warmth will reach you again. It is true that "when God closes the door, he opens the window". And I thank him for that. 

Luckily, I have also had the help of a personal coach and counselor to help overcome the grief. This has been very beneficial for me, and I highly suggest reaching out for this kind of help. Going beyond the death of someone you love is not easy, but standing still and settling for desperate loneliness or misery will never allow you or the person whom you lost to be happy. For the sake of the person you loved, go forward, find joy and take their spirit with you on the path, as it is only a matter of time when you will meet once again.

NB: While we're fighting to recover No Pasarán from Google's pernicious and gratuitous ban, I am blogging here, at No Pasarán's sister blog. 

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RIP Charlie Kirk: This Is What Is Bound to Happen When You Constantly Refer to Your Adversaries as "Fascists" and as "Threats to Democracy"


What a day to commemorate 9-11, the day after Charlie Kirk was brutally gunned down at an event to promote debate, discussion, and a measure of harmony with the Left.

This is what happens, this is what is bound to happen, when you constantly refer to your adversaries as fascists, as Nazis, as #racists — i.e., as monsters; as subhuman devils. 

Doesn’t #Adolf Hitler, don’t (existential) threats to democracy, don’t #domestic #TERRORISTS, deserve to be silenced (disregarded, emasculated, banned, removed from polite society, made to #shutup, taken down, gunned down)? 

This is precisely the very reason for the need for @charliekirk11 and for the @TPUSA (see also @benshapiro, @michaeljknowles, @andrewklavan, et al) to go around to #Leftist bastions and try to talk people young and old out of the #HateSpeech (far more insidious than that that @POTUS @realDonaldTrump and other #Republicans are routinely accused of) that they have been indoctrinated into by deranged leftist teachers, leftist #Medias, and leftist political parties (i.e., @TheDemocrats), referred to by Abraham Lincoln as the “fire-eaters” and the “locofocos” (thanks for the Instalink, Sarah).

Incidentally (not): The #Assassination of #TPUSA's Charlie Kirk doesn’t prove that #guncontrol is necessary. On the contrary: The scathing hatred for a substantial part of the citizenry, indeed for a majority of the U.S, population, proves the need, and the raison d’être, of the #2ndAmendment from the very beginning of the Republic… 

RIP #CharlieKirk 
You valiantly stepped forward into the fight 
You boldly stepped into the Light
Prayers for your family 
— your wife, your kids, 
your parents, & beyond 

Via Powerline

Update: "My liberal friends are completely oblivious about how radicalizing the last week has been for tens of millions of normal Americans; Zero clue" by Robert Sterling

NB: While we're fighting to recover No Pasarán from Google's unwarranted ban of a blog of 21 years with 14,000 posts, I am blogging here, at No Pasarán's sister blog.
 

Update: The following day, Republicans Overseas France issued a statement honoring the 24th anniversary of Sept 11, as well as the life of the founder of Turning Point USA.  Randy Yaloz and Paul Reen:

The USA is so politically polarized that we can no longer express political differences and opinions in a respectful, peaceful manner. The freedom of speech, which has always been the bedrock of American Society, is at risk today because of intolerance and hatred. Charlie Kirk, the strongest and most important young voice in the Conservative Republican MAGA movement, was assassinated. Although as of this writing, the shooter is not yet apprehended, it is clear [that contrary to MSM reports that the shooter's motives are unknown,] the assassin was a left-wing intolerant person who was filled with hatred towards Charlie and his Christian conservative values. Hatred fueled by years of dehumanizing Republicans by Democrat Leaders, and Democrat supported media and academics.

Charlie was murdered doing what he loves - speaking to thousands at an American University and debating students that didn't agree with him, in a non-violent and respectful manner. Charlie was an example for everyone. He was a loving husband and father with strong Christian values, he was a brave patriot who loved his country and tried to improve humanity, he was a gifted debater and was respectful of people with opposing views. Charlie and Republicans are not fascists, Nazis, racists, misogynists, transphobes or any type of phobe nor "threats to Democracy", as taught to kids over the past two decades.

Words have consequences. We pray for Charlie's wife, children, family and close friends. Republicans Overseas France will not let him die in vain and will continue to speak truth and express our conviction in a respectful and peaceful way. 

We Are Charlie. 

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2025/09/10

No, "No Pasarán" Is Not a Pro-Communist Blog and Never Was; On the Contrary, Its Mission Is to Denounce Anti-Americans of All Stripes

As the blogosphere rallies in support of ¡No Pasarán!'s restoration to the Internet, some commenters have misunderstood the very title of the blog, going as far as to wonder whether, based on its title (“They shall not pass” or "None shall pass", aligned with the Left during the Spanish Civil War), ¡No Pasarán! isn't a pro-communist blog or even a communist blog.

The short answer is No (or, in Spanish, "¡No!") — not at all. On the contrary: thumbing its nose at leftists, the blog's raison d'être is to denounce anti-Americans of all stripes — domestic as well as foreign.

Certainly, if you are familiar with the blog's banner, you would agree that it is highly unlikely that a (pro-)communist would ridicule the famous photo of Che Guevara by having El Che (or, as we called the Dissident Frogman's doctored photo, Mi-Che) wear Mickey Mouse ears on the top of his noggin. 

In keeping with the cheeky and irreverent element, recall that "None shall pass" is also the motto of the black knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (although we hope to have been more successful than John Cleese).

The blog was born in 2004 — when a number of ex-pats living in France (mainly Paris), most of them on the right, one single left-leaning member, grew increasingly outraged over the amount of anti-Americanism in French media and French society rising in spite of (or because of) the horrendous attacks on 911; and continuing with the George W Bush decision to invade Iraq in order to remove Saddam Hussein. They adopted the slogan: This (i.e., this anti-Americanism, French or other) will not go unanswered. 

Having said that, here is some historical background: Although best remembered as the war cry of the Spanish republicans (sic — a misnomer if there ever was one; actually a mix of socialists and communists) against Franco’s army during the Civil War in the 1930s, the origin of “They shall not pass” or "None shall pass" actually has nothing to do with communism or any political leaning.

It was purely military, originating a generation earlier when the French poilus in World War I made a vow regarding the German invaders, notably at Verdun: “Ils ne passeront pas!”

And No Pasarán has never shied from telling the atrocious truth about leftists, in Spain, in France, in America, or anywhere else. (Indeed, that is (was?) the blog's raison d'être.) As Paul Johnson put it, 

Throughout the Spanish war, Stalinism was assisted not only by superb public relations but by naivety, gullibility and, it must also be said, the mendacity and corruption of Western intellectuals.

That was from a No Pasarán post on Victims of Communism (!) Day (May 1) in 2024, "In Spain in 1937 and 1938, many thousands of Leftists of all descriptions, were executed or tortured to death in Communist prisons (one who escaped was George Orwell)."

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2025/09/09

David Brooks explains Why the New York Times Columnist that He Is Is Not a Liberal


As Bret Stephens shares his insights into Mass Migration and Liberalism’s Fall, as John McWhorter suggests that the term ‘African American’ be dropped in favor of ‘Black’ once and for all, and as an Obama speechwriter wonders whether it isn't time to stop snubbing your right-wing family — what surprises from the New York Times! — David Brooks explains Why I Am Not a Liberal:

Just write people checks.

This is consistent with something I’ve noticed all my life — the materialist bent of progressive thought: the assumption that material conditions drive history, not cultural or moral ones. … Progressives have often argued that improving schools is mostly about spending more money, that crime is mostly the product of material deprivation.

 … [Liberal] Thinkers like Irving Kristol and Nathan Glazer had been poor immigrant kids. They were willing to spend money to fight poverty, but they wanted the programs to nurture the values that they had seen firsthand help people rise: hard work, family and community cohesion, reliability, a passionate commitment to education. These values tend to inhere in communities before they are transmitted to individuals.

Progressives, by contrast, are quick to talk about money but slow to talk about the values side of the equation. That’s in part for the best of reasons. They don’t want to blame the victims or contribute to the canard that people are poor because they are lazy.

 … Human agency disappears if research subjects are reduced to a bunch of variables that can be correlated. People who overly rely on social science knowledge are going to tend to focus on money because it can be counted more easily than culture. People who rely on government to solve problems will tend to overemphasize the power of money because that’s the thing government most easily controls. 

 … Populism is not primarily economic; it’s about respect, values, national identity and many other things. All that spending [that Joe Biden's team threw at problems] did not win anybody over [to the Democrat Party]. 

 … Today most of our problems are moral, relational and spiritual more than they are economic. There is the crisis of disconnection, the collapse of social trust, the loss of faith in institutions, the destruction of moral norms in the White House, the rise of amoral gangsterism around the world.

I’ve been driven away from the right over the past decade, but I can’t join the left because I just don’t think that tradition of thought grasps reality in all its fullness. 

 … If you can find some lefties who are willing to spend money fighting poverty but also willing to promote the traditional values and practices that enable people to rise, you can sign me up for the revolution.

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For Blacks in America, the African connection is too long ago: It’s Time to Let Go of ‘African-American’


You may remember that after meeting with the sisters Diamond and Silk, Donald Trump reported the revelation that amongst themselves, blacks never refer to themselves as African American.

Well, it turns out that a liberal-leaning African-American — I mean a liberal-leaning black man — is in total agreement and the linguist writes as much in the New York Times. Declaring that It’s Time to Let Go of ‘African American’, John McWhorter goes on to ask "Why not just say what we mean?"

The problem [with African American] is that the term appeared on [Zohran Mamdani's college] application, or anywhere else. Plenty of Black people have never liked it, and ever more are joining the ranks. It’s time to let it go.

“African American” entered mainstream circulation in the late ’80s as a way to call attention to Black people’s heritage in the same way that terms like “Italian American” and “Asian American” do for members of those groups. The Rev. Jesse Jackson encouraged its usage, declaring: “Black does not describe our situation. In my household there are seven people and none of us have the same complexion. We are of African American heritage.” In 1989 the columnist and historian Roger Wilkins told Isabel Wilkerson: “Whenever I go to Africa, I feel like a person with a legitimate place to stand on this earth. This is the name for all the feelings I’ve had all these years.”

Since that time, the United States has seen an enormous change in immigration patterns. In 1980 there were about 200,000 people in America who were born in Africa; by 2023 there were 2.8 million. So today, for people who were born in Africa, any children they have after moving here and Black people whose last African ancestors lived centuries ago, the term “African American” treats them as if they are all in the same category, forcing a single designation for an inconveniently disparate range of humans.

Further complicating matters is that many Africans now living here are not Black. White people from, for example, South Africa or Tanzania might also legitimately call themselves African American. 

 … A term that is meant to be descriptive but that can refer to Cedric the Entertainer, Trevor Noah, Elon Musk and Zohran Mamdani is a little silly. 

And not just silly but chilly. “African American” sounds like something on a form. Or something vaguely euphemistic, as if you’re trying to avoid saying something out loud. It feels less like a term for the vibrant, nuanced bustle of being a human than like seven chalky syllables bureaucratically impervious to abbreviation. Italian Americans call themselves “Italian” for short. Asian Americans are “Asian.” But for any number of reasons, it’s hard to imagine a great many Black Americans opting to call themselves simply African.

To the extent that “African American” was designed to change perceptions of what “Black” means, it hasn’t worked. The grand old euphemism treadmill has done it in. Again and again we create new terms hoping to get past negative associations with the old ones, such as “homeless” for “bum.” But after a while the negative associations settle like a cloud of gnats on the new terms as well, and then it’s time to find a further euphemism.

 … But all along we’ve had a perfectly good word to describe Black people: Black. We should just use that.

Black power! Yeah. But African American power? 

 … “Black is beautiful.” Yes. Truly, “African American” isn’t.


While David Brooks explains Why I Am Not a Liberal, while Bret Stephens shares his insights into Mass Migration and Liberalism’s Fall, and while an Obama speechwriter wonders whether it isn't time to stop snubbing your right-wing family — leading one to wonder whether the New York Times is getting a modicum of common sense — John McWhorter's article, It’s Time to Let Go of ‘African American’, leads to the associate professor of linguistics at Columbia University being invited to a debate with David Leonhardt (produced by Jillian Weinberger) regarding "the politics of how we talk about race and identity and discuss whether “Latinx” is a thing."

David Leonhardt: … Can you summarize for me the background and the history of the debate between African American and Black?

John McWhorter: … In 1988, when the Rev. Jesse Jackson had a massive influence on the Black community, he basically declared that we need to start calling ourselves African Americans rather than Black, because Black was too crude and general to capture all the different shades that we are.

And I think the idea also was that to add the African part was to give a note of pride, a note of heritage. And so it happened very quickly. If you were alive and mature at the time, it was as if all of a sudden one week you were supposed to say African American rather than Black.

I never much liked it. I didn’t rail against it, but it never felt right to me because I’m Black. I’m a Black American, but to me the African connection is too long ago. It’s too abstract. It didn’t feel right. Italian American is one thing. Your mother, your grandmother speaks Sicilian, and you’re eating Italian food and you have a certain way of talking. There’s a whole culture.

Black American culture is not African in that way. It’s Black American. But time has gone by and the problem is that the term “African American” has become so awkward that it was time to start asking some questions. Because back in 1988, there weren’t nearly as many immigrants from Africa in the United States as now. That number has truly skyrocketed.

And so it’s at the point where — well, what about the African Americans who are like Italian Americans, where Africa is just a generation or two away? You speak one of the languages or you halfway speak it. In other words, you are [truly] an African American person. Is that person really the same thing as Eddie Murphy or me? And it was time to start asking some questions.

 … Leonhardt: Well, if we’re going to talk about uncomfortable linguistic subjects, we have to talk about Latinx, which has had a little boomlet of becoming a symbol of how parts of the progressive left, particularly the academic elite progressive left, have become out of touch with parts of America. … 

So how did we end up with the phrase “Latinx,” John? And how do you think about it?

McWhorter: That is a very 2010s thing. I remember first hearing it at Columbia from students around 2014. And I thought, OK, it’s clever. It avoids the gender binary.

But the simple truth is it’s been a long time now, and very few actual Latinos are ever going to embrace the term. Partly because X is awkward. It’s not very aesthetically pleasing given that Spanish words so often end in vowels, which the human ear likes. Then, more to the point, there are an awful lot of Latinos who don’t want to get rid of the gender binary. That is, however you feel about it, generally a minority opinion among human beings.

That means that it’s highly imposed, but I’m not angry about “Latinx” the way many people are because I live in a very Latino neighborhood in New York and I hear Spanish daily. I have never heard a single person ever use it.

  … Leonhardt: … Democrats thought if we enact a more and more and more open border policy, as Joe Biden did, we will win more Latino support. In fact, the opposite happened because when you look at actual public opinion, Latinos have views on immigration, much as they have views on “Latinx,” that look much more like American society as a whole, and not like the views of academics that you are hanging out with presumably, John, at faculty meetings.

McWhorter: [laughs] One of the hardest things for humanities and social science academics is that they are often under an understandable and sincere impression that their views on matters like on what Latinos should be called, on immigration, on frankly any social issue, are truth rather than an opinion.

 … Leonhardt: And maybe to be a little bit mischievous, I would say the last item on the McWhorter doctrine is don’t confuse arguments that you hear coming from academia with views that are widely held among the American public. Maybe they are, but there’s a good chance that they are not.

McWhorter: [laughs] That makes me sound so disloyal to what I think of as my tribe, but I’d have to come clean and say yes.




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2025/09/08

Obama Speechwriter Wonders Whether It Isn't Time to Stop Snubbing Your Right-Wing Family?


Is the New York Times getting a modicum of common sense? As David Brooks explains Why I Am Not a Liberal, as Bret Stephens shares his insights into Mass Migration and Liberalism’s Fall, and as John McWhorter suggests that the term ‘African American’ be dropped in favor of ‘Black’, there is push-back even at the Gray Lady at one of liberalism's most (in)famous (and most appalling and utterly vile) ideas — that to punish one's own family (often the older generation) for supporting Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, uh, for supporting George W Bush and the neocons, for supporting Donald Trump and the conservatives, the (adult) offspring — proudly — break off all contact with the (grand-)parents.

Now, a speechwriter for Barack Obama asks whether it isn't Time to Stop Snubbing Your Right-Wing Family, pointing out that "ostracism might just hurt the ostracizer more than the ostracizee." Having said that, it is nigh impossible to find a comment among the 620+ in the Times that does not disagree — worse, that does not show disgust — with David Litt's light-hearted article.

Furthermore, as Dennis Prager pointedly mentioned more than a few times over the years, there are few things more cruel than to deny parents the pleasure and grand-parents the right to visit with their children (i.e., with the "tolerant" leftists themselves) and with their grand-children (i.e., with the "tolerant" leftists' own kids). "There are people who call my show, tell me they have never met their grand-children" bewails the head of PragerU. Indeed, what David Litt turns into a feel-good piece, Dennis Prager calls a terrible crisis in America.

 
Let's turn to Obama Speechwriter David Litt:

Not too long ago, I felt a civic duty to be rude to my wife’s younger brother, Matt Kappler.

I met him in 2012, and it was immediately clear we had nothing in common. He lifted weights to death metal; I jogged to Sondheim. I was one of President Barack Obama’s speechwriters and had an Ivy League degree; he was a huge Joe Rogan fan and went on to get his electrician’s license. My early memories of Matt are hazy; I was mostly trying to impress his parents. Still, we got along, chatting amiably on holidays and at family events.

Then the pandemic hit, and our preferences began to feel like more than differences in taste. We were on opposite sides of a cultural civil war. The deepest divide was vaccination. I wasn’t shocked when Matt didn’t get a Covid shot. But I was baffled. Turning down a vaccine during a pandemic seemed like a rejection of science and self-preservation. It felt as though he was tearing up the social contract that, until that point, I’d imagined we shared.

Had Matt been a friend rather than a family member, I probably would have cut off contact. 

 … My frostiness wasn’t personal. It was strategic. Being unfriendly to people who turned down the vaccine felt like the right thing to do. How else could we motivate them to mend their ways?

I wasn’t the only one thinking this. A 2021 essay for USA Today declared, “It’s time to start shunning the ‘vaccine hesitant.’” A Los Angeles Times piece went further, arguing that to create “teachable moments,” it may be necessary to mock some anti-vaxxers’ deaths.

Shunning as a form of accountability goes back millenniums. … 

But that was before social media. We live in a world of online fandoms, choose-your-own-adventure information and parasocial relationships. Few people who lost friends over the vaccine changed their minds. They just got new friends. Those exiled from one version of society were quickly welcomed by another — an alternate universe full of grievance peddlers and conspiracy theorists who thrived on stories of victimized conservatives.

 … No one is required to spend time with people he or she doesn’t care for. But those of us who feel an obligation to shun strategically need to ask: What has all this banishing accomplished? It’s not just ineffective. It’s counterproductive.

These days, ostracism might just hurt the ostracizer more than the ostracizee.

 … When I share stories about surfing with my brother-in-law, people often tell me about relationships in their lives pushed to the brink by politics. Sometimes, they’re proud of ties they severed. More often, they’re hoping for a way forward. How can we pierce bubbles of misinformation? Can friendships fractured in the Trump era be repaired? 

 … When we cut off contacts or let algorithms sort us into warring factions, we forget that not so long ago we used to have things to talk about that didn’t involve politics. Shunning plays into the hands of demagogues, making it easier for them to divide us and even, in some cases, to incite violence.

There are, of course, some people so committed to odiousness that it defines them. … In an age when banishment backfires, keeping the door open to unlikely friendship isn’t a betrayal of principles; it’s an affirmation of them.


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2025/09/07

Powerline on the fate of the disappeared site No Pasarán: "Something out of a real life Biden-era horror movie"


Over at Powerline, readers of the blog are warned that the fate of 

the disappeared site ¡No Pasarán! … sounds like something out of the real life Biden-era horror movie.

Scott Johnson proceeds to quote the message of a long-time follower of Power Line who wrote him about the matter — and to whom we are exceedingly grateful.(Also thanks to Ed for the Instalink.) Consultant Damian Bennett, an old old friend of ours, proceeds to list eight bullet points concerning Google's "ham-fisted censorship" while asking Power Line to share the links below with its readers:

At Bēhance: Restore ¡No Pasarán!

At Le Monde Watch: BE TANK MAN! Join The Fight To “Restore No Pasarán” To The Blogosphere.

Until ¡No Pasarán! is restored, Owner/Publisher Erik Svane can be found blogging at Le Monde Watch.

Glenn Reynolds has deplored the suppression of ¡No Pasarán! in posts that can be found here.

In addition, also thanks to Doug Ross and Republicans Overseas France for their support.
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