F**king Mondays (Or Tuesdays): The Kids Are Not Alright

Also: a subscriber exodus, delightful misogyny, and Trump's latest legal woes.

Angry college students

Apologies for being late on this. I’ve been suffering with some residual anemia symptoms over the past few days and yesterday was pretty tough. I’m hopefully over the worst so fingers crossed. Anyway, your favorite weekly column is here:

The lunatics have taken over the asylum

I’m increasingly ambivalent about Bill Maher these days, mostly because he’s gone “Alt” on a number of issues. From dodgy views on vaccines to President Biden’s age, the HBO comedian often treads a very fine line between sane liberal and cartoon anti-woke activist.

However, when it comes to the left wing reaction to Hamas’s horrific attack on Israeli citizens earlier this month, Maher has been spot on. In a lengthy screed on his show, Maher eviscerated Harvard students for blaming Israel entirely for Hamas atrocities.

“There are few if any positives to come out of what has happened in Israel but one of them is opening America’s eyes to how higher education has become indoctrination into a stew of bad ideas, among them the simplistic notion that the world is a binary place where everyone is either an oppressor or oppressed,” he said.

“The same students who will tell you that ‘words are violence’ and ‘silence is violence’ were very supportive when Hamas terrorists went on a rape and murder rampage as if they were the Vikings. They knew where to point the fingers—at the murdered—and then it was off to ethics class.”

I know I’ve been talking about this a lot, but I do think it’s extremely important that the Left tackles this problem before it gets completely out of control. We now seem to be in a situation where you can get kicked out of college for using the wrong pronouns, but not for praising a murderous terrorist group that beheaded, gang raped, and burnt innocent Jews.

I’m not suggesting kids don’t go to college because of the hard left indoctrination, but I do think campuses need to stop the activists writing the curriculum. My late colleague Chez Pazienza was much earlier to the party on this than I was, writing all the way back in 2015 that the lunatics were taking control of the asylum:

We now live in a country and an era in which a small but vocal minority on the internet and in our nation's colleges is attempting to hold our language and thought hostage by deciding for us what is and isn't acceptable within both. The reason for this, mostly, is the belief that uncomfortable words and ideas cause not simply offense but genuine injury and that those injurious words and ideas should be stamped out completely for the good of everyone. It used to be adult conservatives who were the censors within our culture -- now it's young liberals.

Chez’s argument was similar to Maher’s; the identity politics left is constructing an Orwellian dystopia by perverting language, distorting history, and shutting down anyone who dares to speak out.

Israel, according to the hard Left, is the oppressor and the Palestinians are the oppressed. This view is so deeply held that the slaughter of Jewish children is seen as a mere footnote in the quest for Palestinian liberation.

Some inconvenient facts: Jews are provably indigenous to the Middle East, muddying the argument that they are a foreign occupying force. Furthermore, between 1920 and 1970, roughly 900,000 Jews were expelled from Arab and Muslim countries they had lived in for thousands of years. I don’t recall any marches for the Jewish right of return to any of the Muslim countries they were kicked out of. Why? Because this doesn’t fit a simplistic narrative that Jewish occupiers did bad things to indigenous Muslims. The truth, as always, is a lot murkier.

I’m not bringing this up to excuse crimes committed by the West or even Israel. My point is that students — and liberals — should be able to discuss these historical facts without fear of being ostracized. You can be horrified by slavery, opposed to colonialism, and think the Israeli government is terrible. But you can also acknowledge that non-white empires were terrible, slavery wasn’t exclusively a white enterprise, and Jews have been victims of Muslim and Arab atrocities.

To subscribe or not to subscribe

We’ve had a big influx of new Banter Members over the past few days, alongside an equally big number of cancelations. I’m sure this has something to do with our coverage of the Israel/Hamas conflict, which is hardly surprising. It’s a very, very tough issue to cover and I know that whatever we have, some members are going to feel alienated or angered. That being said, I am acutely aware of the dangers of audience capture (where you unconsciously start writing things to please your audience rather than challenging them), and I hope that our readers respect our independence more than anything else. A big thanks to everyone sticking around for the uncomfortable stuff.

A role model for young men

Tucker Carlson friend, Russell Brand ally, and alleged rapist Andrew Tate has been spreading his unique form of narcissistic misogyny to his 8.1 million fans:

I know some young men who follow Tate religiously and hang on his every word. I find this deeply troubling.

The rats continue to flee

Some breaking news today:

Jenna Ellis, a pro-Trump lawyer who amplified former President Donald J. Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud as part of what she called a legal “elite strike force team,” pleaded guilty on Tuesday as part of a deal with prosecutors in Georgia.

Addressing a judge in an Atlanta courtroom, she tearfully expressed regret for taking part in efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election.

Ms. Ellis, 38, pleaded guilty to a charge of aiding and abetting false statements and writings, a felony. She is the fourth defendant to plead guilty in the Georgia case, which charged Mr. Trump and 18 others with conspiring to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Mr. Trump’s favor.

I’m no legal expert, but if your own lawyers are turning on you on what many believe to be your most high stakes court case, the odds of you staying out of jail probably aren’t that good.

See you next week!

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