“Peak Woke”

The Ford Foundation has spent decades tearing the country apart, tax-free

It’s November 2023, and, following the October 7 attacks by Hamas terrorists that killed some 1,400 Israelis and at least 31 Americans, thousands of demonstrators march through New York City, calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. Chants of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” echo through the streets, along with “there is only one solution: intifada revolution.” Among the crowd is the infamous Palestinian American activist Linda Sarsour, who warns through a megaphone that a cabal of wily Jews has conspired to place “their little posters” (of kidnapped Israeli civilians) across the city, seeking to entice people to rip them down. While many onlookers might look like “ordinary people,” she says, the Jews have “their little people all around the city,” surveilling others. Sarsour is there to deliver such rhetoric in part because she’s been paid to be there: her nonprofit, MPower Change, has received $300,000 in grant funding from the Ford Foundation “to build grassroots Muslim power.”

h/t PA Cat

When I was a cub reporter working at the Washington Post a half-century ago, being a journalist was first and foremost a craft. I once tried to slip my opinion into an article, but my editor wrote on the copy that ‘nobody gives a shit what you think’.

It was harsh, but good training. Our primary job as journalists was not to indoctrinate but to inform. Even when writing an opinion piece, you would try backing up assertions with facts and leave room for the possibility that your point of view may not be the only permissible one.

A gradual move back to normalcy has become apparent.

Writing in this space five months ago, I argued that an anti-woke counterrevolution was starting on American campuses. While that is certainly even more true today, I am seeing increased signs of a more widespread revolt against relentless attacks on traditional American values such as respect for free speech and private property, as well as a reverence of God, hard work and assessing people on the basis of meritorious accomplishment.

Have you ever stopped mid hike to listen to an ominous lumbering sound populating the deep brush and, in that moment of terror before a cheeky squirrel is revealed, thought, “Would I rather be stuck in a forest with a man or a bear?” This hypothetical, popularized recently on TikTok, has made its way to downstream social media, with women answering in forums and videos that they’d rather be alone in a forest with a bear than a man. As one might expect, more than a few men (and women) find this knee-jerk preference for sharing a bit of arboreal real estate with wild Ursus rather than Frank from Lac du Flambeau incredibly dense and downright offensive.

The insanity of the elites is colliding with the common sense of the people.

If you – like me – loathe authoritarian, faux-progressive scolds, it’s actually been a good few years. I know it might not seem like it, with the ‘Queers for Palestine’ contingent currently running riot on American university campuses, but hear me out. Across the Anglosphere, one politician after another, beloved by the media but increasingly disliked by the public, have exited the stage, often jumping before they were pushed.

Last week, an old video of Katherine Maher, the new CEO of NPR, resurfaced online. It was filmed just after she stepped down as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), which raises funds for Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia.