by The terror of ‘woke’ cancel culture knows no bounds
DAVID M. WEINBERG
https://worthywatch-h45go6maxh5rpepgu.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Could-the-Bible-be-cancel-cultures-next-victim_-opinion-The-Jerusalem-Post.pdf
No one understood the dynamics of ideological persecution and the failure of society better than German pastor Martin Niemoller.
In his famous post-World War II confessional speech, he said (in paraphrase): “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a communist. Then they came for the socialists, then the trade unionists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist nor a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Jump 80 years forward, and ask yourself this: After “canceling” one literary, musical, artistic, and theatrical classic after another, will be anybody left to speak for the Bible when the “woke” movement inevitably goes after the canonic text of Jewish (and Christian) civilization?
After all, isn’t there slavery in the Bible, alongside discrimination against women, the handicapped, and non-Jews? Isn’t there intolerance of gender-fluid identities and racism regarding certain nations? The Bible even calls for genocide against the seven Canaanite nations, and Amalek! —
So why shouldn’t the small group of “intellectuals “progressives,” and
radical kings-and-queens who rule today’s “cancel culture” approach the
Bible censoriously too? What would better amplify their (illusion of) power
than twitter-shaming all Bible-believers, or even burning entire chapters of
that “culturally offensive” book?
In their power game, nothing is sacred (except for progressive political
correctness itself) and nothing is immune from their “enlightened” rampage.
Theirs is an imperialistic revolution, where violent ends justify violent means
– which is what Marx really taught.
Marx was obsessed by class struggle. The weaponized “woke” are obsessed
with race and sexual orientation. Defining everyone by their skin color and
robotically deeming whites as evil and guilty of “systemic racism” – a
dangerous new term that purposefully inflates personal bias into built-in
inequity that must be demolished with totalitarian force – the woke have
forced everybody but them onto the defensive.
Matthew 5:11-12 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
As Natan Sharansky and Gil Troy have written, we are today living in a
Western version of “fear society”; where pressure to conform does not come
from the totalitarian top (as was the case in the Stalinist Soviet Union) but
from the fanatics around us – on campus, at work, and in the media – who
bully people into silence or into politically-correct compliance.
How else to explain the rash of wild book banning and movie cancellation of
late?
First they came for Jean and Laurent de Brunhoff’s books on Babar the
Elephant, which were deemed as “celebrations of colonialism” because the
title character leaves the jungle and later returns to “civilize” his fellow
animals.
Then they came for H.A. Rey’s Curious George books, targeted for
cancellation because the premise of a white man (with a yellow hat!)
bringing home a monkey from Africa was said to be demeaning to Africans
and especially African Americans
Then they came for children’s movies, leading Disney Plus to pull Peter Pan,
Dumbo, Aristocats, Lady and the Tramp, The Jungle Book, and Swiss Family
Robinson from its offerings for children under seven. Disney labeled these
as movies that contain “stereotypes and negative depictions of people or
cultures” that could corrupt the souls of young people. (PBS also has put
“sensitivity warnings” on Sesame Street’s Muppets).
In Dumbo, you see, the crows “pay homage to racist minstrel shows.” Peter
Pan “portrays Native people in a stereotypical manner that reflects neither
the diversity of Native peoples nor their authentic cultural traditions. Peter
and the Lost Boys engage in dancing, wearing headdresses and other
exaggerated tropes.”
In Swiss Family Robinson, the pirates who antagonize the Robinson family
are portrayed as a stereotypical foreign menace. “Many appear in yellow
face or brown face and are costumed in an exaggerated and inaccurate
manner with top knot hairstyles, queues, robes and overdone facial makeup and jewelry, reinforcing their barbarism and otherness.”
Then they came for Mr. Potato Head, and forced Hasbro to make the doll
gender neutral. It is amazing how the woke are worried about the sex of a plastic potato!
THEN THEY came for Dr. Seuss, including his iconic books, And to Think That
I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo and McElligot’s Pool – because
of “racist and insensitive imagery.” What is “insensitive” here? An Asian
person wearing a conical hat, holding chopsticks, and eating from a bowl,
and a drawing of two bare-footed African men wearing what appear to be
grass skirts with their hair tied above their heads.
An “academic” journal ridiculously has published “The Cat Is Out of the Bag:
Orientalism, Anti-Blackness, and White Supremacy in Dr. Seuss’s Children’s
Books.” Theodor Seuss Geisel was accused posthumously of “racial
transgressions across his entire publishing career.”
Undoubtedly next on the guillotine will be Berenstain Bears. Why? Well, here
is a famous (and certainly-offensive-to-the-woke) paragraph from this
beloved series of books by Stan and Jan Berenstain: “I’m a father. I’m a he.
A father’s something you could be. I’m a mother. I’m a she. A mother’s
something you could be.” Such horrible gender stereotyping. Burn all the
Berenstain Bear books!
The problem here is not the cultural effort to diversify children’s book
characters and their creators. The problem is the “cancellation” of wellmeaning works out of an uncritical and violent embrace of “critical race
theory.” It’s one thing to take a few truly bad books off the shelves. It’s
another thing altogether to see racism and “gender-backwardness”
everywhere and try to impose a new “woke” ideological straitjacket on
society.
Indeed, New York progressives now seek to introduce a state-imposed curriculum that will teach kindergarteners about “gender fluidity.”
The legislation of State Senator Samra Brouk of Rochester would teach
eight-year-olds that there are multiple, fluid gender choices. They would also
be instructed about the opportunity to receive hormone blockers that would
allow little children to avoid having the “wrong puberty.” Children as young
as 11 would learn about different kinds of sex, and about “queer, two-spirit,
asexual, and pansexual identities.”
Higher grades would be fed more overtly political lessons, such as the need
to lend support to every possible “family configuration.” The curriculum also
clearly condemns religious believers and others who hold fast to traditional
morality, including sexual abstinence before marriage. The concept is to
produce kids with preprogrammed “woke” ideas.
Writing in The National Post of Canada, John Robson warns in Seussian
verse of the curse at hand:
“There is nothing, no nothing, that (the woke) find in the past, That they
won’t burn to ash with a self-righteous blast.
When they’re done with their work then a wasteland you’ll see, Not a book will be standing, and not a movie.
There are some who once thought they could gain from PC, It will strike
down my foes but it won’t target me.
Sadly now it is clear that its rage knows no bounds, And upon its old friends
it will set its hell-hounds…
I’m no racist, no hater, but this I decree, Others too had their faults but all’s
not well with me.
So please fix what you can and repent what you can’t, But don’t ever let
loose with a paranoid rant.
That the past was a plot and that all things were wrong, Until history ended
and you came along.
Thus to Seuss at the close of this poem I return, And I say with conviction his
books must not burn.”
The writer is vice president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, jiss.org.il.
Our redemption draws near …