From “racism” to LGBT rights: the new left wants to dominate public discourse
In short, the debate on "anti-racist kneeling" in sport has also come to us, causing politics to break into the football fields. And a world of football already with the suitcase ready for the World Cup in the Islamist regime of Qatar rises to the chair to explain to us what brotherhood, equality and tolerance are. Well, there is a clamor for everyone to kneel against racism. But what "racism" are we talking about?
Of course, there is still plenty of racism in the world. In many countries, minorities, including indigenous ones, are subject to discrimination and persecution. But it is certainly not the Yazidis, Uighurs, Rohingya that we think of when we witness the kneeling rituals in sport. Nor to the ethnic conflicts that have always stained Africa with blood. Nor to the growing xenophobia among blacks in South Africa. Nor to the rights of the Kurds in Turkey, to remain within one of the nations participating in the European championships. In fact, the "anti-racist" rhetoric has defined a very specific and "ad hoc" concept of "racism" which is identified with the selective blaming of the "white" West, which instead is – coincidentally – the part of the world that most it has overcome racial bias, which is more economically and culturally open to immigration and where social mobility is easier.
Moreover, the idea that kneeling represents a normal and spontaneous way in which players exercise their "legitimate freedom of expression" appears unconvincing, for various reasons. First of all, because players can exercise freedom of expression – and exercise it – in various ways throughout their everyday life. Many of them support various types of campaigns. But how can it be considered normal that political contents are instead displayed in the specific context of competition? Can we imagine any professional context in which people who work start making political sermons in front of customers – be it in the supermarket, at the electrician or in a meeting between companies? Such an attitude would immediately be considered unprofessional, harassing and inappropriate and, if implemented, would have predictable consequences.
Secondly, the causes that each of us have at heart are many and varied. If the “anti-racism” kneeling represented a spontaneous demonstration in support of a cause felt by some players, what would happen if others at the same time thought of demonstrating for other causes? What would football become if five players put up an anti-tax picket, if the benches staged a demonstration against abortion, if the linesmen waved for animal rights and if the two goalkeepers left the doors as a sign of protest against illegal immigration? Would we really like sport to become a stage for all kinds of improvised political exhibitionism? Could every football field become a confused Speakers' Corner where our darlings we pay to kick a ball would take care to let us know what they think about this or that topical issue?
But of course, the proponents of kneeling do not really contemplate the prospect of political manifestation in sport taking on "pluralist" connotations. For progressives it is evidently only the causes they have selected that must enter the stadiums from time to time – and everything will be done so that the pressure on the athletes is such that it is obviously inconvenient and embarrassing not to adapt to the collective ritual. In other words, the concept is that kneeling must be "spontaneous" about as much as were the Roman salutes that athletes from so many nations bestowed on Hitler at the Berlin Olympics.
Of particular significance is the fact that Wembley stadium managers have been asked to turn the music to full blast while the players are on their knees, in order to cover any whistles. In practice we want "perfect" television images, suitably filtered by any form of dissent, even by resorting to "techniques" that would scream "dictatorship" if implemented by others. But if the players have the right to carry out an unscheduled and out-of-context political demonstration, then wouldn't the spectators have the right to freedom of expression of their disappointment? Then, of course, we have already heard in recent days various attempts to denigrate those who dared not to kneel, all of which clearly implied the accusation of "racism" or at least of
"Insensitivity to racism".
This is, of course, a laughable accusation. It is like saying that, since he did not even demonstrate himself in the field against corruption and clientelism, pedophilia, the mafia, the death penalty or the repression of freedom of the press, then he is implicitly in favor of all these things. In fact, "racism" is the pretext, good today, but perfectly interchangeable with many others – be it the environment, feminism, pacifism, LGBT rights, and so on. Not causes to be addressed in their real dimension and their concreteness, but flags at the service of the only real goal of this "new left", which is to take total control of "public discourse".
After the cinema and Big Tech, now we need to put our hat on sport and make it a megaphone of a huge project of "purification of thought" that does not admit competition or contestation, but with respect to which we can only identify ourselves as "loyal" or "unfair". We are on a very bad slope and it will take a lot of work to stop this drift.
The post From "racism" to LGBT rights: the new left wants to dominate public discourse appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/dal-razzismo-ai-diritti-lgbt-la-nuova-sinistra-vuole-dominare-il-discorso-pubblico/ on Tue, 29 Jun 2021 03:58:00 +0000.