Peterson claimed that being trans is a “sociological contagion” comparable to “satanic ritual abuse" During the podcast, Rogan and Peterson speculated on what causes a person to be trans. Peterson asserted that the answer is a “sociological contagion” comparable to “the satanic ritual abuse accusations that emerged in daycares in the 1980s,” referring to the “rash of false allegations” about supposed occult child abuse that fueled the “satanic panic” during the 1980s and early 1990s. 

“Once Trump normalized discourse that was hateful, xenophobic, conspiratorial and sexist, he made it more mainstream. People who previously self-censored those thoughts felt free to not only think them, but say them – particularly on social media, where anonymity removes accountability. That hasn’t really changed.”

No one really has the language yet to describe the fragmentation of perspective that is beginning to unfold. Liberal democracy is designed to accommodate multiple "opinions" or even "points of view", but it's clear that what's happening now is beyond this.

What prepares men for totalitarian domination in the non-totalitarian world is the fact that loneliness, once a borderline experience usually suffered in certain marginal social conditions like old age, has become an everyday experience …– From The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) by Hannah Arendt

The irony in all this is that these “protectors of enlightenment” are guilty of the very behavior this phrase derides. Though often dismissed as just a fringe internet movement, they espouse unscientific claims that have infected our politics and culture. Especially alarming is that these “intellectual” assertions are used by nonscientists to claim a scientific basis for the dehumanization of trans people. The real world consequences are stacking up: the trans military ban, bathroom bills, and removal of workplace and medical discrimination protections, a 41-51 percent suicide attempt rate and targeted fatal violence . It’s not just internet trolling anymore.

MacDonald's outstanding work complements Ricardo Duchesne's "The Uniqueness of Western Civilization" and Arthur Kemp's "March of the Titans." Read more

Schneider has continued to break records on Jeopardy! and has extended her record for longest winning streak by a woman with her 24th victory. She has become the highest-earning woman in the show’s history and fourth highest-earning regardless of gender, with a total of $897,600 (just over £660,000).

Milan Kundera tells us that the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

The Secret Life of “Political Correctness” In his campaign speeches, including Trump’s New Hampshire speech following the June 2016 massacre of 49 people at an Orlando, Florida nightclub, Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked “political correctness”. “I refuse to be politically correct”, Trump told his New Hampshire audience. “I’m so tired of this politically correct crap,” he complained to South Carolina business leaders back in September 2015. “This country, political correctness is killing us,” Trump charged in a February 2016 interview on NBC’s Today show. Throughout the primary season Donald Trump has attacked “political correctness” so much, it might have raised the question – was he aware of the dark new conspiracy theory association that the term “political correctness” has taken on, over the past decade and a half, for many on the American right ? If he wasn’t, he probably is now.

In his new book, Lazzarato deals, among other things, with the differences of the old and the new fascism. Adorno already suggested that the new fascism does not have to come with uniforms, boots and Nazi symbols. For Lazzarato, too, it is clear that after 40 years of neoliberal politics, what announces itself as a new fascism will not be a simple repetition of the interwar experience. For him, neo-fascism results from a twofold mutation, namely, on the one hand, from historical fascism and, on the other, from the organization of counter-revolutionary political violence. The historical fascism, after the revolutionary forces were destroyed, was quite an agent of the process of „modernization“, which, „integrated“ socialism and eliminated by force any manifestation of the conflict. In Italy, he restructured traditional industry and created the film industry, reformed the school system and the civil code, and, like the Nazis, established a kind of welfare state. Adam Tooze points out that the history of the intimate relationship between capital and fascism was rewritten and distorted during the Cold War, omitting, for example, the fact that as early as 1935 important banks such as JP Morgan collaborated closely with people who were later treated as fascist criminals.

“LOOKS LIKE CIVIL WAR is BECOMING INEVITABLE !!!” read a post a month before the Capitol assault. “WE CANNOT ALLOW FRAUDULENT ELECTIONS TO STAND ! SILENT NO MORE MAJORITY MUST RISE UP NOW AND DEMAND BATTLEGROUND STATES NOT TO CERTIFY FRAUDULENT ELECTIONS NOW !”

Facebook groups swelled with at least 650,000 posts attacking the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s victory between Election Day and the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol, with many calling for executions or other political violence, an investigation by ProPublica and The Washington Post has found.