Scotland's Terrifying "Hate Crime" Regime
Scotland's Terrifying "Hate Crime" Regime
Big week for Mayorkas and spying, Lionel Shriver on mania, the missing teen babysitter
Romina Frohar writes on what Scotland’s new hate crime law is already doing to the academic conversation:
Recently, I was at a writing retreat. While I was there I spoke to a professor, who asked whether I thought it was acceptable for her to publish a paper on decolonization, given that she is a white woman. She confided that a colleague had told her she shouldn’t publish the paper because she isn’t a person of color.
“What if no one else would write what you’ve written? Are you willing to censor yourself?” I asked. Eventually, I convinced her that not publishing the paper because of her race would be neither productive nor equitable.
The incident highlighted how the new Hate Crime Act could make universities, already obsessed with identity politics, even worse. From now on, academics won’t just have to fear being slated by their colleagues or students if they transgress against the identity politics orthodoxy, they will have to be wary of police prosecution as well. What professor would take on the prevailing academic and activist view on systemic racism, for example, if they could be investigated by the police for stirring up hatred against a minority group? Even if the police decide they won’t proceed with a hate crime allegation, they will likely record it as a “non-crime hate incident” which will stay on that person’s police record and appear on enhanced record checks if they apply for a job in the future.
Freedom of expression is already in danger in UK universities, with many academics too afraid to speak out. Instead, they have been reduced to whispering to one another about what they really think. With this hate crime Act, it seems the Scottish government wants to extinguish those whispers too.
A Busy Week for Washington
A lot on the plate, and more minefields for Speaker Johnson:
House Republicans will formally present their articles of impeachment against Mayorkas to the Senate on Wednesday. The DHS secretary was impeached nearly two months ago. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), as president pro tem, will swear in senators on Thursday. And then the fireworks begin.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is expected to offer a motion seeking the immediate dismissal of the case against Mayorkas. That only requires a simple majority to pass. If Democrats stick together, they can bypass a trial entirely, bringing a quick end to what has been a sputtering effort against Mayokas from the start. On the off-chance that one or two Democrats defect, Republicans are trying to stay united to force a full trial.
The Senate GOP messaging on this is straightforward — Mayorkas must be held accountable for his handling of the migrant crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, so a trial is necessary. Notably, the messaging memo doesn’t weigh in on the actual question of whether Mayorkas should be convicted and removed from office.
For his part, Mayorkas says he’s paying very little attention to the Hill proceedings.
“I am focused on the work,” Mayorkas told reporters on Friday. “When I say I’m doing my work, I’m going to be testifying before two committees on Wednesday. That is perfectly reflective of my approach.” Mayorkas will be appearing before the House and Senate Appropriations panels this week to discuss the department’s FY2025 budget request.
Mayorkas has dismissed the GOP allegations as “baseless,” as have other top Democrats and the White House. Here’s a memo from DHS rebutting the attacks on Mayorkas.
It’s possible that Democrats could win the dismissal vote even if they don’t have all 51 in favor. A handful of Republican votes could be in play, like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who has spoken favorably of a dismissal.
FISA: Across the Capitol, Speaker Mike Johnson and House GOP leaders will attempt once again to pass a FISA reauthorization bill. The third time’s a charm! Maybe! …
A small number of amendments will be made in order at the Rules Committee. These include a proposal from the Judiciary Committee that requires national security agencies to obtain a warrant when they seek to query information on any U.S. person caught up in surveillance.
We’re told that Judiciary and Intelligence members will all vote for the rule. Whether these members vote for the underlying legislation once the amendments are considered on the floor is a different matter. This is chiefly aimed at the House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), the ranking member, and their colleagues. The Judiciary panel has overwhelmingly supported the inclusion of the warrant requirement in any FISA reauthorization bill.
But the reality is that if this modified version of FISA isn’t passed this week, Johnson may be forced to put a clean reauthorization bill on the floor next week under suspension before FISA Section 702 lapses on April 19 — and it could pass. So FISA opponents have to pick their poison here.
More on Johnson and what Joe Biden needs to do on the foreign aid bill.
The Era of Social Mania
The social mania displays a few consistent characteristics. First and foremost, it never seems like a social mania at the time. In the thick of a widespread preoccupation, its precepts simply seem like the truth. Trans women are women; get over it. Or: masculinity is toxic; virtually all women have been subject to sexual torment and male abuse of power; regarding any accusations they make, no matter how far-fetched or petty, women must be believed. Or: Covid-19 is so lethal, and such a threat to our endurance as a species, that we’ve no choice but to shut down our whole economies and abdicate our every civil liberty to contain the disease. Or: all Western countries are “systemically racist”; all white people are genetically racist; the police are all racist (even if they’re black) and should be defunded or abolished; the only remedy for “structural racism” is anti-meritocratic, over-compensatory racial quotas in hiring and education.
While the seeds of a mania have often been planted earlier, for most ordinary people it comes out of nowhere. Transgenderism rocketed to a cultural fetish over a matter of months. After one fully fledged creep was exposed as a serial sex abuser, #MeToo spread on Twitter like potato blight. Literally overnight, citizenries in March 2020 took it for granted that their “liberal democracies” could justifiably deny them freedom of movement, assembly, association, press and even speech, while many became eager enforcers of the chaotic, despotic, and sometimes positively silly new regime. It took only a few days for George Floyd’s death to trigger huge protest marches all over the world. This hyperbolic response to a single undeserved killing in a one mid-sized American city was partially fed by the pent-up frustrations of whole populations under house arrest during Covid. But for Koreans to troop down the streets of Seoul chanting, “Black lives matter!” when the country has hardly any black people was insensible. Likewise, Britons chanting “Hands up, don’t shoot!” when their constabulary is unarmed. Moreover, all these recent examples illustrate how moral panics have become more international in scope than ever before.
Manias are fuelled by emotion. The cult of trans has capitalised on our yearning to seem enlightened and compassionate. It has been presented as the logical next step after gay rights, the movement plays on our craving to feel ultra-contemporary. #MeToo both fed off and promulgated resentment, self-pity, and vengeance; in standing up to abuse of power, it tempted some women to abuse their own power to ruin men’s lives. Covid lockdowns stirred primitive terror of death and contagion, until we came to view other people as mere vectors of disease. BLM stimulated the nascent Christian proclivities for guilt, repentance, and penitence even in the secular, while offering black people opportunity to vent frustration, self-righteous fury, and even hatred. All manias thrive on our desire to be included by our own herd and on our anxiety about being exiled — or, if you will, about being UnHerded.
Toward a New Conservative Synthesis
Polling indicates the continued salience of culture for Republican voters. The controversies may have changed somewhat, but cultural issues have long been a part of conservative politics. Religious believers were a bedrock of the Cold War coalition. The GOP platforms of 1980 and 1984 called for restoring voluntary prayer in public schools—a measure that Ronald Reagan also endorsed. Support for restricting abortion and pornography was a mainstay of conservative politics during the Cold War era, though a source of tension with libertarians. Buckley and some other prominent conservatives backed drug legalization, but many others (including most elected Republicans and Republican voters) wanted to keep most drugs illegal for recreational purposes.
These days, conservatives worry about the rise of identity politics—a key factor, they believe, in the entropic weakening of the nation’s civic life. Public institutions that promote racial essentialism, in their view, are incompatible with the demands of a diversifying, pluralistic society. When public schools demonize “cultural appropriation” and insist on segregated “affinity spaces,” they counter the heterogeneous mixing that has done so much to strengthen and renew the United States over its history. How to cope with large private corporations that promote divisive doctrines may be a controversial issue on the right, but addressing how government-run institutions can better serve the aims of pluralism and achievement is not. Ensuring that schoolchildren are not denied advanced math classes in the name of some supposed “equity” agenda, for example, is something nearly everyone on the right would agree on.
Donald Trump’s political influence over the last decade can be seen through a cultural lens. Continetti noted that Trump communicates on a “psychological” level. He speaks to the widespread alienation of many Americans—to a loss of faith in the federal government, major institutions, and the American political system more broadly. Trump’s brawls with the “deep state” have helped make him a tribune of the alienated. That might explain why his various criminal indictments have, at least in the Republican primaries, tended to enhance his appeal; they reveal for his supporters the profound hostility of the American political establishment to him—and, they believe, to their values.
The diminished credibility of our governing institutions in the eyes of many Americans (not just conservatives) is a deeply troubling development. Cold War conservatives promoted an executive branch strong enough to manage a global battle with Soviet Communism. Today’s demand might instead be cultivating networks of governance flexible and accountable enough to secure public legitimacy. Encouraging local empowerment could give some communities a renewed sense of agency. Federal reforms—from expanding the House of Representatives to changing the primary process—have been proposed partly in response to such widespread political estrangement.
Feature
Items of Interest
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Protestors rally in Dearborn, shout “death to America.”
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Lawfare
What the GOP plans post 2024 on Biden probes.
Officials mum about potential sale of Trump Vegas hotel.
2024
Trump says abortion needs to remain a state issue.
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Tech
Yellen gives meek message to China on TikTok ban.
Democrats are using TikTok while voting for divestment.
Ephemera
Details on the total solar eclipse.
The odd real estate of movie theaters.
Curb finale finds Larry David on trial again.
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Podcast
Quote
““Pessimism is not in being tired of evil but in being tired of good. Despair does not lie in being weary of suffering, but in being weary of joy. It is when for some reason or other the good things in a society no longer work that the society begins to decline; when its food does not feed, when its cures do not cure, when its blessings refuse to bless. We might almost say that in a society without such good things we should hardly have any test by which to register a decline; that is why some of the static commercial oligarchies like Carthage have rather an air in history of standing and staring like mummies, so dried up and swathed and embalmed that no man knows when they are new or old.”
— G.K. Chesterton