Moms For Liberty quoted Hitler. How should the anti-woke community respond?
Never bend the knee to an outrage mob.
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Prefer to listen? Here’s the recording of a quick Twitter Space I did on the topic:
In my book Actively Unwoke: The Ultimate Guide for Fighting Back Against Woke Insanity In Your Life, I have a whole chapter dedicated to the rules for the actively unwoke. This is a play on Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, reformulated to serve our purpose.
Rule #8 is one of the most important: Never bend the knee, no matter what.
I once explained What The Cancel Mob Wants as a part of my Woke Mind series. The TLDR is this: They want to silence you. A struggle session is not about right or wrong - it is only an effort to achieve one of the primary goals of the woke left, gaining as much power as possible.
If they silence you, they gain power over you.
So, when you are in a struggle session, staring down the barrel of an angry mob, your only option is to weather the storm. If you do not, the mob will control you.
No matter what you did, do not apologize.
Even if you invoke the dreaded H word - Hitler.
This is currently the controversy that the conservative activist group Moms For Liberty is engaged in - a local chapter quoted Hitler in one of their newsletters and they are being dragged all over the internet for it:
They even have politicians calling for their cancelation amid this controversy and their being named a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Now, I’m no fan of Moms For Liberty, at least at the national level. I’m sorry if that disappoints people, but I can’t claim to support an organization I don’t support.
I think those normal moms involved in local chapters are mostly ok and are trying to do the right thing. But nationally, I believe Moms For Liberty is a grifting operation designed to do nothing more than enrich the organization's founders, clout-chasing conservatives who want status more than they want to solve problems.
They focus most of their efforts on book banning, which I have warned against from the beginning and generally consider to be a giant waste of time.
I don’t think the women who run Moms for Liberty even understand the problem they’re fighting against…they only understand how to raise money. Which, of course, is all that matters. Raising money pretending to solve a problem they have no interest in solving because if they solved it, they wouldn’t be able to raise any more money.
I think if you’re a parent looking to get involved and connect with other parents, there are many better organizations you can associate with, such as No Left Turn in Education or Parents Defending Ed. Those organizations are legit and actually care about the things they’re doing.
That being said, it’s important to stand up for what’s right and take principled positions regardless of personal feelings. I wish more people in the “anti-woke” space did this and I hope I can set an example of that.
Moms For Liberty did nothing wrong and they have nothing to apologize for.
And anyone saying otherwise is either a liar or a coward.
I define woke as authoritarian.
Woke is fundamentally authoritarian because it is an ideology that wants to tell you what you can think about, what ideas you can discuss, what words you can use, etc. Woke exists on both the political left and the political right.
So, fundamentally, telling people who they can and cannot quote is problematic. There is no rule that says “thou shall not quote historical villains.”
But more than that, the quote that Moms For Liberty selected was not advocating for Hitler’s belief system. Rather, it was obviously selected as an ominous warning regarding how the woke left has captured the schools in order to capture the youth.
They’re not wrong about that, and we shouldn’t be pretending there is.
I’m reminded of an incident a year and a half ago when the conservative right decided to cancel me for a quote they themselves took out of context in a 2-hour-long spiritual discussion where I said Hitler went to heaven because everyone does, that trauma in life happens for a reason, and that there is no hell so no one can go there no matter how bad you think that person is.
I was called an antisemite for that by the conservative right, the ones who claim to be against cancel culture, even though just a few months prior, I was the only person aggressively speaking out against real antisemites who were attempting to hijack the anti-CRT space.
The backlash to critical race theory is here, and they're trying to co-opt the anti-CRT movement
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But, none of this mattered and Prager University (who I should never have trusted in the first place in retrospect) led the charge in canceling me along with conservative grifting influencers like Ian Miles Cheong.
I bring this up because I have had direct experience with being canceled over the same sort of nonsense, except that I got it from the right and not the left.
You learn a lot when you’re canceled. You learn who you can trust, and who you can’t. You learn how to better identify the fraudulent people next time.
I wish there had been one person or one organization with integrity that had stood up and done the right thing when that happened…although I was very lucky to have a community of normal people who did support me through it.
So, how should the anti-woke community respond?
By giving the middle finger to the outrage addicts looking for a keep gotcha and saying “we will never bend the knee to your cancel mob bullshit.”
I don’t need to like Moms For Liberty to assert that no one is upset that Moms For Liberty quoted Hitler, and no one really believes Moms For Liberty is a hate group.
This is feigned outrage to feed the outrage addition they all have and score cheap political points that will literally change no one’s mind but will entrench both tribes further in their militant stances.
And the only answer that makes sense when anyone or any organization gets dragged into a struggle session is for everyone to say “not today, satan.”
Don’t apologize.
Don’t bend the knee.
No, you are not required to apologize for advancing an idea, a thought, or even a quote that hits someone right in the feels.
Their feelings are their problem, not yours.
Don’t even acknowledge it as a serious discussion.
Ignore it, go on with your day, and focus on things that matter.
What do you think?
Leave a comment and let me know.
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We are not royalists. We are not owned. Never, never bend the knee. Sometimes you have to be proud that you are doing the right thing. It adds startch to the backbone.
Exactly right.