“These kids are mimicking behaviour seen in the US, but at a far more provincial level. They are local wokels.”

— Tim Blair, Daily Telegraph

Let me begin by apologizing to Australians, on behalf of America, for causing this problem. You see, in the years leading up to the 2016 presidential election, Democrats knew that Hillary Clinton would be their nominee. Because feminism would be an obvious selling point for her campaign, the propaganda organs of the mainstream media and the energies of left-wing activists were devoted to promoting the Feminist™ brand, especially on college campuses. The idea was to mobilize young women to vote Democrat, thus to exploit the so-called “gender gap” on behalf of Mrs. Clinton. It was in this context that the “campus rape epidemic” was invented, with President Obama announcing a White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault in January 2014, and publicizing the phony claim that 1-in-5 female college students were rape victims. This was cynical partisan politics, and anyone who took it seriously was in danger of losing touch with reality.

The United States is home to the world’s largest English-speaking population (325 million) and, the way the Internet operates, anything that makes big news in America will also likely catch attention in England (53 million), Canada (36 million), and Australia (24 million). This explains how the myth of widespread campus rape traveled to Australia, where activists embraced all the lunatic ideas that had been promoted by U.S. feminists, and where a popular sex columnist’s dissent from this hysteria caused a campus riot:

THE riot squad was called to the University of Sydney after commentator and sex therapist Bettina Arndt faced a storm of protesters.

Ms Arndt was invited to speak at the university on what she says is the myth of a rape crisis on campuses.

When police arrived, up to 40 students were blocking access to the event at about 6pm last night, The Daily Telegraph reported.

University security stood by while people attempting to pass through to watch the talk were pushed and shoved before police came to break it up.

During her talk, the controversial commentator said she believed universities were becoming unsafe places for both men and women.

“It is the most unromantic thing to ask ‘Can I kiss you? Can I touch you?’ Most women don’t want a man to behave that way,” she said.

She said young men should seek an “enthusiastic yes”, noting: “I think particularly in this current climate, you can’t afford to take that risk. You have to constantly make sure she is still on side.

“(Women have) been told on this campus that she can turn around later and say she changed her mind about consent, and that is absolutely appalling.” . . .

Ms Arndt told radio host Alan Jones she is still waiting to hear back from the University of Sydney on who’s paying the extra security bill.

“We’re trying to get an answer from Sydney University as to what we’re paying for with regard to this $500 security bill,” she said.

“Today’s conservatives aren’t interested in shutting down free speech, they’re trying to promote it.

“And the left, amazingly, is all in favour of silencing people expressing views they don’t like.” . . .

The protests were organised by the university’s Wom*n’s Collective as a way to “challenge her rhetoric”.

“Bettina’s ‘Fake Rape Tour’ across university campuses in Australia is a misinformed and harmful attempt to undo the work of generations of student activists and advocates in combating the issues of sexual violence on campus. We refuse to allow her rhetoric to go unchallenged,” two spokeswomen for the group told Honi Soit, the university’s student magazine.

In an opinion piece, the magazine said free speech was “not an absolute right”.

“By allowing Arndt to claim that rape on campus is not prolific enough to justify a vigorous social and institutional response, we are further disempowering victims,” the op-ed states.

Columnist Jack O’Brien explains:

To provide some background, the Club engaged in a tiresome back and forth with the administration regarding security costs, which the university ultimately refused to assist with. Why are security costs even a factor? Because the left will use whatever means necessary to shut down discussion, just as they do with every event where its content does not fit their strict narrative of how the world should operate. The fact that the administration cannot grasp this, and refused to cover costs to ensure student’s safety was bewildering and irresponsible.

The event went ahead as planned, but not without predicted, violent and intimidating opposition. Paid ticket holders were barred from entering the peaceful discussion by a mob of screaming protesters who flooded the hall leading to the room. Any individual that tried to make their way through was obstructed, pushed around and verbally bullied with the intention of shaming them for wanting to calmly engage with a simple debate.

Young men and women were trapped inside the room, with security having to form a physical, interlocked barricade to stop the violent mob from entering the venue. There were no other exits, and attendees – many of whom had no opinion on Bettina’s views and just wanted to hear what she had to say – were trapped behind a wall of hateful, screaming members of the “tolerant left” barking at them like rabid dogs. It was only when the Police Riot Squad arrived that the protesters were moved on, after many paid ticket holders were bullied out of attending the talk.

One of the protesters chants ran along the lines of “this is what democracy looks like.” If democracy looks like a forceful, intimidating and physically abusive horde screaming at peaceful event attendees wanting to engage in a debate and trying to shut down their right to speak, then we have a serious problem.

This riot in Australia was a “monkey see, monkey do” imitation of the tactics of the anti-Trump “resistance” mobs on U.S. campuses.

These people are emotionally disturbed. A handful of cynical operatives, on the payroll of tax-exempt non-profit organizations, can assemble a mob of vulnerable young women — most of whom are under treatment for depression, anxiety, eating disorders or other mental illnesses — seeking some cause to give meaning to their pathetic and lonely lives.

What we need, honestly, is a war for these kids to protest. I’m beginning to grow nostalgic for the glory years of the Bush administration. Remember when university campuses were swarming with hippie “peace” activists accusing the Bush administration of genocide in Iraq? There is a certain percentage of college kids who aren’t happy if they don’t have something to protest against, and in the absence of legitimate issues, they’ll invent something like a “campus rape epidemic” then organize rallies against this imaginary crisis. This is why “climate change” is the perfect cause for student activism — it’s the Snuffleupagus of issues, apparent only to the “enlightened.” Being ostentatiously concerned about global warming is a type of virtue signalling, a way to communicate your own moral and intellectual superiority, which is what most “progressive” activism is really about. Considering themselves too smart to believe in anything as ordinary as Christianity, atheistic youth who fancy themselves to be intellectuals become chumps, easily scammed by promoters of three-card Monte hustles like “climate change.”

You’ll find that the campus protest mobs tend to shop around for “issues” to get agitated about. They’re nothing if not trendy. For example, it would be interesting if someone showed up at a “campus rape crisis” event and asked for a show of hands: “How many of you are vegans? How many of you are into yoga and ‘mindfulness’? How many of you identify as bisexual, asexual, genderqueer and/or ‘nonbinary’?”

They remind me of what Orwell said about socialism in the 1930s:

One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words “Socialism” and “Communism” draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, “Nature Cure” quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.

What you will discover, if you examine the types of people attracted to the student “activism” scene, is that most of them are abnormal — and deliberately so. These activists disdain normality as boring. They crave the distinction of being seen as different from their peers, whom they contemptuously regard as a herd of mindless conformists. And so they go shopping around for identities and causes, donning them like costumes, in an effort to display their imagined uniqueness. This is how the suburban middle-class white kid ends up as a student radical, protesting for “divestment” from Israel or screaming “fascist” at any campus speaker who represents a discernibly conservative viewpoint.

All of these various “issues” that concern student radicals nowadays would be instantly forgotten if President Trump started a war. Maybe he could find an excuse to start bombing North Korea, or deploy a couple of divisions to occupy Syria. It doesn’t matter where the war is, or why it gets started, really. What matters is that it would immediately become an all-absorbing focus of the attention for campus activism. They need something to be angry about, and I say, let’s give it to ’em.







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