Mediaboss Marketing

The hostile tone that branded 2021 set in early in the year, when a mob in support of former President Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol to disrupt Congress transfer of power to incoming President Joe Biden.

It cost Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, rioter Ashli Babbitt, and three other people their lives. Nearly 140 police officers were injured, dozens were disabled for months, and four later died by suicide, according to Capitol police reports.

More than 60 people in Florida have been arrested in connection with the attack, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Ramifications of the partisan warfare that manifested on that infamous day reverberated in Florida throughout the year.

Like millions around the world, Floridians witnessed the riot as it happened, many stunned to realize that dissent could erupt into something so fundamentally un-American. The insurrection failed, members of Congress resumed deliberations after spending hours in hiding, and Biden was certified as president.

But 147 Republican members of Congress refused to certify the election results, including most of Floridas representatives in the U.S. Capitol. It was a declaration of Trump-centered partisan warfare that persisted over the year and infiltrated state politics.

White nationalist groups prominent at the Jan. 6 riot such as Proud Boys and Oath Keepers proliferated in Florida, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, and they sent representatives to a rally at Floridas Capitol on July 10 to protest the jailing of people they called patriots who have been arrested in connection with the insurrection.

The partisan strife throughout 2021 over the pandemic, racism, election integrity, academic freedom, gun violence, climate change, and much more was not violent as the attack on the U.S. Capitol, but it was corrosive and relentless.

Alongside COVID-19, which has killed more than 800,000 people in the United States, partisan hostility was a hallmark of 2021. Disputes over vaccines, face masks, lockdowns, freedom from public-health regulations, and the science behind the public-health response tracked the battle over the outcome of the 2020 presidential election that courts across the country said Biden clearly won and Trump clearly lost although Trump supporters both refuse to acknowledge it and fail to prove otherwise.

The best news of 2021 was the deployment of vaccines and treatments to tamp down COVID, which sickened and killed fewer people than in 2020 but continued to mutate into new variants. The rate of hospitalizations and deaths in Florida and elsewhere plummeted, thanks largely to the medical advancements, despite periodic surges in cases due to emergence of variants and resumption of public interactions.

Florida has suffered more than 4 million COVID cases and 62,000 deaths since the pandemic hit here in March 2020, many thousands of them coming after multiple vaccines became widely available for adults, according to state and federal health authorities. Later in 2021, COVID vaccines won approval for most segments of the population, including children. Widely available monoclonal antibodies therapy eased symptoms and speeded recovery for many COVID patients.

But even the deployment of medicines to fight COVID was not immune from partisan warfare.

Framing their stance as freedom from federal government overreach, Floridas Republican-led Legislature and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis blocked essentially all public-health protocols recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Legislature held a special session in November to adopt laws blocking mandates for vaccines and face masks in public schools, work sites, and other public places and further shielding businesses from liability for COVID infections among their customers, employees, and patients.

The governors political action committee sold campaign merchandise with the slogan, Dont Fauci My Florida, mocking COVID protocols recommended by infectious-disease expert and presidential adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci. In response to the governors ban against local policies to limit COVID infections, bumper stickers began to appear, saying, Dont DeSantis My Democracy.

Florida discord over the wearing of face masks made national news when local school boards, starting with Broward and Alachua counties, voted in emergency sessions to defy the governors order against requiring masks to be worn at school as the fall term began.

DeSantis and Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran insisting that mask-wearing is a parental decision, not a public-health matter punished the defiant districts financially, but the Biden Administration came to their aid.

Mask opponents attended the emergency school-board meetings in droves, often disrupting them. Anti-mask organizations such as Moms For Liberty were founded and mobilized by Republican operatives.

Florida voters favored Trump over Biden in the 2020 elections, though Biden won nationally. Republicans in Floridas congressional delegation continued to support Trump in 2021, voting against impeaching him a second time for his role in fomenting the insurrection and for failing to quell it while members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence were in harms way.

Many also continue to voice opposition to formal congressional investigation of what happened on Jan. 6, why, and who is responsible.

Three days after Trump lost the presidential race, DeSantis appeared on a national network to endorse the idea of Republican legislators refusing to certify Biden victories in their states and instead casting their electoral ballots for Trump. Floridas only statewide-elected Democrat, Agriculture and Consumer Affairs Commissioner Nikki Fried, called DeSantis remarks irresponsible, destructive and inflammatory to a fragile nation.

Famously, the ex-president retired to his resort in south Florida and continues to play a national role in Republican politics, possibly to include another run for the presidency. His ally DeSantis is considered a possible running mate for Trump in 2024 and even a presidential candidate himself if Trump does not run again.

A year out of office, Trump and the Trump Organization face a series of investigations related to the Jan. 6 riot, alleged attempts to interfere with the outcome of the 2020 election, potential business fraud, and sexual assault allegations, as reported in CNN and JustSecurity, a litigation tracker hosted by Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law.

The congressional special committee investigating the insurrection, often cited as the Jan. 6 committee, has requested or ordered testimony and documents from high-profile Trump supporters such as campaign strategist Steve Bannon, who in August 2020 was arrested along with two Florida men and a third man and charged with defrauding Republican donors in an alleged $25 million southern border-wall scam.

Nikki Frieds office had investigated the purported charity at issue in 2019 and provided findings to federal investigators.

Trump pardoned Bannon at the end of his term. Brian Kolfage of Walton County, Andrew Badolato of Sarasota County, and a co-defendant from Colorado were not and faced prosecution.

Bannon defied the Jan. 6 committees subpoena and was charged with contempt of Congress.

In Congress, Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida stood up for Bannon in regard to the contempt charge, after making national headlines himself along with former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg.

Gaetz has been under federal investigation in connection with an alleged sex-trafficking ring involving Greenberg and underage teen-age girls. Greenberg negotiated a plea deal and is reported to be cooperating with Justice Department investigators, who gained reinforcement with two experts in public corruption in October, as The New York Times reported. Gaetz has denied wrongdoing.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Lucy Morgan bared some of the tangled backstory in the Phoenix.

In another Florida connection, Sarasota-based Cyber Ninjas, led by Trump supporters, was engaged for months by the GOP-led Arizona state Senate to audit presidential election results there that delivered fewer votes to Trump than to Biden.

The first-time election auditors who famously anticipated finding China-related bamboo fibers on ballots in Arizona uncovered no voting fraud. But the escapade cost Trump-friendly donors nearly $6 million and Arizona taxpayers $425,000, according to investigative reporting by Phoenix sister outlet the Arizona Mirror.

In October, Cyber Ninjas CEO and Sarasotan Doug Logan revealed by the Mirror to be a Stop The Steal advocate refused to testify before a U.S. House committee looking into the purported audit and its larger role in undermining voter confidence in American elections.

Throughout 2021, Florida Republicans continued to imply that voting by mail, done widely in 2020, facilitates voting fraud, and conspiracy theorists continued to rally around the discredited claim that re-election was stolen from Trump by election officials.

Florida Democrats and nonpartisan election supervisors disputed claims that Floridas 2020 elections were in any way seriously flawed.

Republican-sponsored election reforms framed as guardrails and adopted by the Legislature in Senate Bill 90 mirror measures in other red states that restrict access to voting, especially by mail, despite Florida being widely touted for running efficient, trouble-free elections in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic.

SB 90, sponsored by Sen. Dennis Baxley and Rep. Blaise Ingoglia, a recent former chairman of the state Republican Party, is being challenged in federal court by the League of Women Voters of Florida and other voting rights groups. The critics call the reforms unconstitutional and designed to suppress minority voters, who in some parts of the state tend to vote Democratic.

Florida tracked other conservative states in fomenting culture wars that further polarized Floridians. Gov. DeSantis convened a special session of the Florida Legislature in November to pass his so-called freedom agenda, including banning local governing boards from mandating COVID protocols. One new law allows a study into the feasibility of divorcing Florida from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which labor unions looked to for help in making workplaces more COVID-safe.

During the special session, we will do everything within our power as a state to protect Floridians from the unconstitutional, un-American, and morally reprehensible overreaches on the part of the federal government, House Speaker Chris Sprowls and Senate President Wilton Simpson said in a joint statement of support.

Democrats such as Sen. Bobby Powell, who leads the Florida Legislative Black caucus, decried GOP attacks on so-called woke culture that seeks to reduce police violence against Black people, curb gun violence, address institutional racism, and expand voting rights, not restrict them.

For Floridians who look like me, or shades thereof, [the governors] agenda is decidedly unwelcome and anything but peaceful. Its about locking us up and locking us out, all while selectively plucking the words of Martin Luther King to somehow make this racist targeting okay, Powell said in written statement just before Christmas.

Its not okay to push what he calls anti-woke legislation thats a smoke screen for sanitizing history and erasing the lessons of the past, Powell continued. Its not okay to threaten teachers with litigation for simply teaching. Its not okay to muzzle those whose heritage was defined by Jim Crow or unleash those who have never moved beyond its hateful intent.

Over the objections of Democrats, the Legislature also passed an anti-riot law, House Bill 1, following Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, but civil-rights organizations are fighting it in federal court; a law purporting to crack down on Big Tech social media platforms that censored Trump for promoting the untrue conspiracy theory that he was cheated out of re-election; and a law to measure intellectual freedom at Florida universities that critics say is designed to stifle free speech and dissent.

Further, the DeSantis administration launched a fight with the federal government to block immigration policy that allows certain undocumented immigrants to be free on their own recognizance or under electronic monitoring while awaiting their day in the nations backlogged immigration court system. Arguing that some wind up in Florida, DeSantis wants the Legislature to give him $8 million to ship asylum seekers out of the state.

Those and other laws passed in 2021 face court challenges, making litigation against DeSantis and his allies another hallmark of the year. The League of Women Voters of Florida, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the NAACP, the League of United Latin American Citizens, and other civil rights groups have led the legal battle against such measures.

Read more here:
Year that began with partisan violence spawned culture wars and litigation in FL - Florida Phoenix

During the grimmest days of the First Crusade in 1098, the western Christians found themselves besieged by the Turks in Antioch. They had travelled more than a thousand miles from France, and countless fellow believers had died in the almost impossible trek across the known world; now running out of food and water, they were tired, hungry and desperate.

At their lowest point, and ready to give into despair, Christian spirits were raised by the arrival of one Peter Bartholomew, a poor man from Provence who claimed he hadbeen visited by the Virgin, promising them victory. The noblemen in charge were suspicious, as Peter was not only an illiterate farmhand type but also quite shifty, yet soon momentum built around his cause. He had an audience.

Peter had then dreamed he had seen the Holy Lance, the spear which had pierced Jesuss side on the cross, and apparently according to his vision was buried outside the citys church of St Peter. So off they all went, digging for hours in the June heat to find this object and prove victory was at hand; after several hours, the exhausted Frenchmen saw Peter suddenly appear clad only in a shirt and barefooted with a lance in his hand. He was proved correct, even if no one had actually seen him find it. Two weeks later, the crusaders won the Battle of Antioch, and the Provenal peasants triumph was complete.

Yet many of the those in charge were still sceptical, and the issue caused division among the crusaders, primarily along regional lines. The Franks as the Arabs called all crusaders were split between the Provenals and Normans, two distinct groups whose cultural and linguistic differences dated back to the Germanic conquest of northern Gaul and beyond. The Normans didnt believe Peter, because the Provenals did.

But the peasant was convinced of his divine support, and in order to prove it, he now announced that he would walk into a fire and emerge unhurt. The day came, the crusaders gathered, and Peter boldly stepped into the flame and died a few days later in agony (or at least, he perished soon after, and although the exact cause of death was unconfirmed, at the very least being burned alive didnt help).

Peter Bartholomew was displaying what evolutionary psychologists call CREDs, credible displays of belief or credibility enhancing displays, designed to build trust and reduce hypocrisy in a community. Peter talked the talk, but he also walked the walk, literally, although his particular case was extreme and unwise; the most typical CREDs are Ramadan or Lenten fasts, but the martyrdoms of early Christians like Catherine and Blandina had a huge impact on the religions rise.

CREDs are one reason why religious groups almost always beat secular rivals; religious communes last on average three times as long as secular equivalents, while neighbourhoods with higher church attendance also enjoy higher levels of charitable giving and social capital, and even faith schools have an edge which others cannot quite bottle, as one former Labour education secretary put it.

Ersatz religions dont have the same effect, and as the Nazis approached in 1941, even Stalin knew that no one was going to die for communism the whole point of communism is that you make other people die for your beliefs and so the churches were reopened.

People will not often make the same sacrifices for their political ideals as for their faith. Although modern progressivism clearly has many religion-like qualities, one argument against its continued dominance is that its followers arent willing to make CREDs, and so it will lose momentum as people begin to see it as upper-class self-interest repackaged in rainbow colours.

People are happy to pompously bloviate about diversity but theyre not going to give up their own job to make way for a woman or member of an ethnic minority. In the late 1960s, as Americas cities were consumed by violent crime, liberals fled in droves, withdrawing their sons and daughters from often-dysfunctional schools which had practised what they preached. They werent going to sacrifice their childrens happiness and safety for a political principle even if, they reasoned, that principle was good for the country as a whole. (Instances of conservative political hypocrisy are similarly boundless.)

Yet some people will make those sacrifices, the modern-day Peter Bartholomews of the culture wars. Just in August, five prominent talk radio personalities in the US died of Covid, having been vocal against either masks, restrictions or the vaccine itself. More recently, a well-known Italian anti-vax radio personality fell to the virus, as did a Dutch economist who thought Covid posed a minimal risk. Meanwhile in Britain, John OLooney, a funeral director and anti-vaxxer, was due to speak at an anti-vax rally but is believed to be in hospital with Covid.

Maybe these anti-vax media personalities dont actually believe their own shtick, and calculate that taking the Pfizer would ruin their credibility but how likely is that? An unvaccinated man in his 50s has about a 1-in-150 chance of dying if he catches Covid, and is much more likely still to be hospitalised, put in ICU and left prematurely aged. Is a career in media really worth that?

More likely, the people with quite wacky beliefs really do believe them, just as Peter Bartholomew genuinely came to think he could walk through the fire; he wasnt just doing it to own the Normans, or because of audience capture.

In the 1995 culture war black comedy The Last Supper, Ron Perlman plays obnoxious radio host Norman Arbuthnot, whom a group of liberal flatmates have invited over with the intention of murdering. They have already killed a climate sceptic, a Christian fundamentalist and a white nationalist, and now the shock jock is going to get it, too.

But Arbuthnot clearly based on Rush Limbaugh is so good at arguing with his progressive hosts that they waver in their intentions. Hes sharp, hes intelligent, hes sort of reasonable and, he admits, he doesnt actually believe half of what he says, he just does it for effect, to please his audience.

Ive heard that said a few times about Right-wing commentators; why would someone who was educated and not overtly stupid have all those obnoxious beliefs that could otherwise only stem from a lack of education?

Political debate is a status game, certainly, while hypocrisy is also universal, especially among journalists, but the chances are your opponents really do believe what they claim, and this applies even to areas that seem to defy logic. Just as the crusaders, and countless others involved in wars of religion, genuinely did believe they were carrying out Gods will, rather than, as so many historians would have it, it was all about power or some materialist explanation.

We should take peoples beliefs seriously yet those beliefs are often arbitrary. No doubt many Norman crusaders had a good old laugh at Peter Bartholomew dying of his burns, and the southern idiots who believed him, but had the humble mystic hailed from closer to Caen than Cannes they most likely would have believed him, too.

Peoples opinions tend to be tribal, and can change drastically to suit their partisan identity. New Conservative voters attracted by Brexit subsequently became more right-wing on welfare, for instance, while Republicans, formerly pro-free trade, shifted in large numbers under the influence of tribal leader Donald Trump.

In the US there is today a huge gap in vaccine uptake between white Democrats and Republicans, but could it have gone the other way? What would have happened had the vaccine been approved in October 2020, leading to a Trump victory? Although long forgotten, the politics of Covid realigned early in 2020, and vaccine politics could have gone the other way, with leading Democrats expressing scepticism about a Trump vaccine before the election.

White Democrats tend to be more educated, but the highly-educated are also prone to irrational beliefs theyre just better at articulating them. In Britain scepticism towards the MMR vaccine is most concentrated among highly-educated white urban neurotics, and ethnic minorities, the two core groups within the progressive voting block. Uptake is as low as two-thirds in Hackney, and not much more in Haringey, two areas with Labour super-majorities. Its not impossible that large numbers of white Democrats would have refused the Trump vaccine.

In an alternative universe, somewhere, there are progressive media figures dying to make some idiotic point about Big Pharma, metaphorically jumping in the fire. Whether the issue is winning the Holy Land or the Covid culture wars, many people would rather be dead than be wrong.

This post originally appeared on Ed West's 'Wrong Side of History'Substack

View original post here:
What really matters in the Covid culture wars? - Spectator.co.uk

Sign up herefor The74s daily newsletter.Donate hereto support The74's independent journalism.

Mike Antonuccis Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.

The National Education Association has a long tradition of finding hidden cabals behind groups that place themselves in opposition to the unions agenda. In 2019, I chronicled the history of NEAs efforts, going as far back as 1998, and its report The Real Story Behind Paycheck Protection The Hidden Link Between Anti-Worker and Anti-Public Education Initiatives: An Anatomy of the Far Right. That report featured this elaborate flow chart.

The unions latest dispatch is a 3,000-word piece posted on its website, headlined, Who is Behind the Attacks on Educators and Public Schools?

It characterizes protests over critical race theory and COVID-19 safety measures as manufactured outrage by small groups whipped into a furor.

Whos holding the whip? Its a web of dark money and right-wing operatives looking to exploit culture war grievances for political gain by spreading disinformation.

But while NEA seeks to warn us of the actions of these conspirators, it has a typical blind spot about its own record of manufactured outrage, dark money and disinformation much of it present in its own article.

It quotes NEA President Becky Pringle: We must reject false narratives that distract and divide us, and come together to ensure that students have what they need to succeed. We should focus on addressing the educator shortage that has only grown more severe during the pandemic.

But an educator shortage that has only grown more severe during the pandemic is itself a false narrative, to the point that even an NEA state affiliate president noted that there is little evidence suggesting a mass exodus. To the contrary, most of our colleagues are staying.

To support its conspiracy theories, NEA cites a number of specialists and experts. One is Tim Chambers, who works for the Dewey Square Group.

The anti-CRT effort is textbook disinformation, manufactured and funded by right-wing think tanks and boosted by programmatically targeted ads to inflame users, Chambers said. It is from well-funded orgs working with suspect local groups on the ground, and with the ever-present background push from Fox News on broadcast and cable behind it all.

Unmentioned in the article is that NEA paid the Dewey Square Group $283,650 last year.

The article also cites the Center for Media and Democracy and Media Matters. Both have received six-figure grants from NEA, though not last year. The article omits the unions previous financial arrangements with these organizations.

NEA is also upset with efforts to recall school board members, particularly in the state of Wisconsin. It cites a researcher from the True North Research firm in Minnesota.

Left unsaid is that True North Research has its own transparency issues. The firm is headed by Lisa Graves, former executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy. NEA and Graves were not always so put off by recall efforts, since both of them were instrumental in the failed recall of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in 2012.

I dont believe people are chess pieces moved around by the high and mighty, but if they are, certainly there are players on both sides of the board.

Follow this link:
National Education Association Post Blames 'Dark Money' for School Culture Wars But Is Silent About the Funds It Pays Its Own Experts - The 74

Spains bullfighting season traditionally kicks off in February in Valdemorillo, a small town located approximately 40km outside of Madrid. It wouldnt usually attract big names, but in 2022, star matador Morante de la Puebla has confirmed his appearance. In a profession characterised by internal divisions, there is a growing sense that the coming season needs to be a success if bullfighting is not to disappear altogether.

Bullfighting has been banned in Catalonia since 2011, but in the rest of the country, the conversation has switched since the onset of the pandemic. Where once the debate focused on prohibition, the question now is whether a lifeline ought to be granted to this ailing cultural industry. The current left-wing coalition government appears not to have the political will to explicitly prohibit what was once known as the national fiesta, or, conversely, to provide support to keep it running. Hence, for example, tickets for corridas were pointedly excluded from a scheme announced by prime minister Pedro Snchez in October last year, whereby young people would be given 400-euro cultural passes to prop up various sectors.

Bullfights are reviewed in the arts rather than the sports sections of Spanish newspapers and fall under the purview of the Ministry of Culture. Declared illegal by the Spanish constitutional court in 2016, the Catalan ban was as much about political grandstanding as protecting animal rights. In the wake of the 2017 illegal independence referendum, the xenophobic and anti-immigration Vox party exploited anti-Catalan and pro-bullfighting sentiment in its campaigning and has become the third-biggest force in Spanish politics. Morante de la Puebla often joins party leader Santiago Abascal on the campaign trail.

But Vox has more to gain from the relationship than bullfighters, especially in rural areas where Abascals party has successfully attracted single-issue pro-bullfighting and hunting voters. The far-right has provided some protection for the profession, but it has also turned it into a more highly prized target. An increasing number of progressive citizens have a visceral dislike of bullfighting because it is seen as the last bastion for reactionaries with no place in a 21st-century European democracy.

In the cultural wars of contemporary Spain, the anti-bullfighting lobby is often too quick to brand aficionados as the cigar-smoking relics of the Francoist regime. Defenders of the national fiesta, meanwhile, preclude any debate on its future by dismissing all potential objections out of hand as manifestations of puritanical censorship. As a result, it is virtually impossible to have a serious debate on bullfighting, an emotive subject which has been weaponised by politicians across the ideological spectrum.

At the local level, city councils have no legal jurisdiction to issue a blanket ban, but they can withhold licences. In the northern coastal town of Gijon, socialist mayor Ana Gonzlez has announced the municipal bullring will from now on be used for live music rather than corridas. Her decisions came after, in her words, a line was crossed: two bulls killed last summer were named El nigeriano (The Nigerian) and another El feminista (The Feminist). The presence of Morante de la Puebla at the event gave this the look of a deliberate provocation, but was probably a coincidence. Fighting bulls inherit their names from their mother, so these monikers will have been handed down to the bulls from previous generations rather than having been thought of afresh. That said, exceptions have been made in the past. The first bull faced by the legendary Manolete as a fully fledged matador in 1939 had been baptised El Comunista (The Communist) under the short-lived Second Republic (1931-36). Such a name was anathema following General Francos victory in the Civil War (1936-39) and The Communist was diplomatically renamed El mirador (The Viewer).

Either way, the case is an example of how the bullfighting lobby has become something of an echo chamber. There is often a failure to understand how it is perceived from the outside. An open letter by the president of the Fighting Bulls Association was a gift to satirists, with its claims that the closure of the Gijon venue was somehow comparable to the destruction of religious artefacts by fundamentalists:

The Taliban, much like the Mayor of Gijon, forget that neither the Buddhas of Bamiyan nor the bulls belong to them, but are rather common heritage of mankind.

In Gonzlezs view, aficionados have had their way for too long, and now is the time to listen to the many citizens of Gijon who oppose bullfighting. In recent years, animal rights activists have organised large demonstrations outside of the bullring. During the pandemic, they have taken the moral high ground by staying at home while accusing the impresario of posing a danger to public (as well as animal) health.

Even ignoring the abolitionist movement, bullfighting is a broken business model. It faces particular challenges that will make survival even harder as the pandemic lingers. Spains premiere bullrings (Bilbao, Madrid, Pamplona, Seville, Valencia, Zaragoza), have been largely inactive for two years. But with an ageing audience and some social distancing measures likely to remain in place, the return of corridas requires a sacrifice from matadors and breeders. They will have to significantly reduce their fees if impresarios are to break even.

There are fixed costs associated with bullfighting that make it difficult to do on a smaller scale. Tales of the demise in popularity appear much exaggerated when major corridas can attract 10,000 plus spectators, but a handful of elite matadors aside, fewer contracts are on the table as provincial rings close. Much like the pandemic, there will probably not be a specific day on which bullfighting ends, but it seems unlikely to thrive in its current guise for much longer.

See the rest here:
Coronavirus and culture wars: Spain's bullfighting industry faces a crunch point in 2022 - The Conversation UK

France is in deep, deep trouble. Hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic and just a few months before the presidential election, the country or rather, the French language is under threat. Whos the culprit? The terror of political correctness imported from across the Atlantic, also known as wokeism. We know too well that America exports its culture to the whole world: movies, music, Anglicisms and now its obsession with gender-neutral language too.

There seems to be no other explanation why the esteemed French-language dictionary Le Petit Robert has included the gender-neutral pronoun iel (pronounced yell) in its online edition. This combination of the male pronoun il and the female pronoun elle can be used for people who dont identify as male or female, or whose gender is unknown. These three small letters have been causing a ruckus in France for weeks now.

While transgender organisations have welcomed the decision, there was little enthusiasm to be found elsewhere. First Lady Brigitte Macron explained that there are two pronouns: il and elle and on Twitter Franois Jolivet, a member of Frances governing party La Rpublique en Marche (LREM), in his outrage, denied Le Petit Robert its status as a reference.

In a letter to the Acadmie Franaise, supreme guardian of French linguistic integrity, Jolivet called on the body to prevent the imminent destruction of the French language by woke ideology. He was applauded for this by his colleague, Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, who declared that inclusive spelling is not the future of the French language.

Oh well, theres hardly any better place on Earth to argue about language and its future than France! The venerable Acadmie Franaise keeps a close watch on compliance with grammar rules to in the country, contesting anything that appears to be too English or modern. Conversely, the literary group Oulipo is trying to modernise French through playful writing exercises, for example by writing an entire book without the letter e. A variety of the language spoken by young people known as verlan joyously swaps the syllables of a word to create something new. And there has been a debate going on for years about whether the French language is sexist or too male, and if so, to what extent.

Positive discrimination, quotas, inclusive language... France says non, merci.

This criticism is not unfounded. There is a rule in French that the male form takes precedence over the female. It was invented in 1676 by Jesuit priest Dominique Bouhour, who proclaimed: When the two sexes meet, the more noble must prevail. And the more noble is, of course, the male. There can be 99 women and one man in a group and, grammatically speaking, this group would be classed as male, taking the male plural form ils. Because the male takes precedence over the female.

At the moment, though, American-style political correctness seems be taking precedence, brazen enough to not even stop at the French language and all of its beautiful centuries-old rules. This isnt the first time wokeism has rubbed conservatives up the wrong way, though. For them, woke represents a left-wing ideology, identity politics, and a victim mentality. It means pandering to the interests of individual groups, which they claim is unwarranted and incompatible with the French principle of universalism that states that all people are equal, have the same rights, and should therefore be treated exactly the same. Positive discrimination, quotas, inclusive language... France says non, merci.

The dispute about iel is causing such a stir because this goes beyond language alone. The French language is seen as an expression of French values too, an expression of what constitutes the Rpublique. As early as 2017, Blanquer said, there is only one French language, one grammar, one Republic. Incidentally, the word Rpublique is female in French. So too is Marianne, its personification, seen on the French government's official logo, French euro coins and on French postage stamps. And apparently thats good enough for Blanquer to demonstrate the inherent feminism of the French state and its language. Poor Marianne must get used to being portrayed as a feminist symbol for absolutely everything.

Perhaps those politicians who are so easily triggered by three little letters should take a leaf out of Charles Bimbenets book, the director-general of publishing house Le Robert.

But yes, its about more than language it's about the future of the country! And who can save the country? Only the Acadmie Franaise of course, whose verdict on the iel dispute is eagerly awaited. Its long been clear where the Acadmie stands on trying to make the French language more inclusive and more gender-neutral: in May 2020, it published a statement declaring that inclusive spelling is harmful to the usage and comprehensibility of the French language.

The Acadmie is not entirely wrong: inclusive spelling makes a Romance language with two genders like French more difficult to write, speak, and understand. Gender-neutral language may have its place in social circles where its not only what is said thats important, but also how it is said. But everywhere else, no. Well, not yet... because language is alive, it is constantly changing. And also, language is a matter of habit. The more often you say something, the easier it rolls off your tongue. Feminist organisation Nous Toutes commented that it is not for ministers or dictionary authors to decide the future of a language. Those who can change the language are those who speak it: you, us, everyone.

Perhaps those politicians who are so easily triggered by three little letters should take a leaf out of Charles Bimbenets book, the director-general of publishing house Le Robert. He remained astoundingly calm in the face of the perhaps manufactured outrage that he and his team had instigated.

In a statement, he wrote that although usage of the term iel is still rather rare, it has been sharply increasing for several months, as the in-house documentalists have noted. So, they deemed it useful to clarify the meaning of this term for people to understand and decide whether to use it or not. Bimbenet welcomed the controversy surrounding the French language, its development and its use, as it at least shows how alive French is.

Lets hope so. Perhaps those three small letters dont mean the end of the Republic, and the situation in France isnt as bad as it seems well, linguistically at least.

See original here:
France's culture wars are going into the next round - IPS Journal