MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Unmasking The CDC’s Medical CIA

Posted by M. C. on June 14, 2023

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/unmasking-cdcs-medical-cia

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BY TYLER DURDEN

Authored by Lloyd Billingsley via American Greatness,

The swampy origins and foreign interests of the Epidemic Intelligence Services of the CDC need to be exposed…

CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky is departing at the end of June and Joe Biden has tapped former North Carolina health boss Dr. Mandy Cohen to replace her. More important than the identity of the CDC director is what goes on behind the scenes, and hints have been emerging. 

In April of 2021, the CDC reassigned Dr. Nancy Messonnier, longtime director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD). In a May 7, 2021 White House briefing, Walensky suddenly announced that Messonnier was stepping down.

“Dr. Messonnier has been a true hero,” Walensky told reporters. “And through her career, in terms of public health, she’s been a steward of public health for the nation. Over this pandemic and through a many-decade career, she’s made significant contributions, and she leaves behind a strong, strong force of leadership and courage in all that she’s done.”

Walensky neglected to mention Messonnier’s series of telebriefings in early 2020, conducted on January 17, January 24, January 29, January 30, February 3, February 5, February 12, February 25, and March 10.

In these sessions, not shown to the public, Messonnier warned that a “novel coronavirus” had emerged from the “Wuhan market” and the highly contagious new virus would “gain a foothold” in the United States. According to Messonnier, many people would be infected, and there was “no immunity.” Some reporters were curious about people traveling to the United States from Wuhan.

“That’s something I’m not at liberty to talk about today,” Messonnier said in the February 5 briefing, without revealing why that was so, or who was laying down the rules. On January 24, reporters who asked about China were told, “CDC has a team that’s been in China for many years where we work closely with the Department of Health in China.” There was information “from China” but Messonnier wasn’t giving it out.

“I think we should be clear to compliment the Chinese,” Messonnier said, “on the early recognition of the respiratory outbreak center in the Wuhan market, and how rapidly they were able to identify it as a novel coronavirus.” And so on, a veritable recitation of China’s talking points, but there was more to it.

In May of 2021, Walensky also failed to mention that “true hero” Nancy Messonnier was an officer of the Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), the CDC’s elite team of “disease detectives,” patrolling the world to prevent epidemics from arriving on American soil.

“EIS officers serve on the front lines of public health, protecting Americans and the global community,” the CDC claims. When diseases and public health threats emerge, “EIS officers investigate, identify the cause, rapidly implement control measures, and collect evidence to recommend preventive actions.”

In practice, as Peter Duesberg noted in Inventing the AIDS Virus, the EIS functions as a “medical CIA,” a support network for the CDC in government, academia, and media. For example, EIS veteran Lawrence Altman became a medical writer for the New York Times and in 2010 rendered a worshipful account of the intelligence service.

In 1995, after completing her residency in internal medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Nancy Messonnier went straight into the EIS. She shows up in the 2013 EIS conference report as a co-author of two studies on vaccine effectiveness, one in Burkina Faso and one in Washington, “among adolescents vaccinated with acellular pertussis vaccines.”

Messonnier’s Wikipedia profile shows the EIS officer in a jacket emblazoned with medals. According to the site, she was born Nancy Ellen Rosenstein, sister of Rod Rosenstein, the Justice Department official who launched the investigation of President Trump for allegedly colluding with Russia. 

Messonnier’s connection to Rosenstein, and her experience with the EIS, did not emerge at the outset of 2020. By October, the EIS did briefly expose itself. 

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Examing the Foreign Policy Establishment’s ‘British Connection’

Posted by M. C. on June 14, 2023

Of course, apart from world encompassing imperialist frameworks and Russophobia, the British also introduced their American counterparts to the central banking and government propaganda apparatuses necessary to expanding Washington’s cheaply won contiguous land empire of the nineteenth century abroad in the twentieth. Having adopted these methods, Washington could, when Britain’s strength was finally exhausted, “Pick up the torch of empire from our [Britain’s] still cooling fingers.”8

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/examing-the-foreign-policy-establishments-british-connection/

by Joseph Solis-Mullen

cecil rhodes

In 1877, before he had made his fortune via the founding of De Beers Consolidated Mines and the British South Africa Company, the imperialist par excellence Cecil Rhodes had dictated a part of his will thusly: “[To make provision] for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world.” This was to include, “The ultimate recovery of the United States of America.”1

This grandiose vision was pragmatically tempered in the final version of his will (1902), which instead set up an eponymous scholarship, the stated intention of which was to, “promote unity among English speaking nations.” Thus was the Rhodes Scholarship, which sees a handful of America’s future leaders shipped off to Oxford each year, conceived of and brought into being.2

Just looking over a list of some of those selected, the influence of British thinking on American grand strategy in the century that followed becomes all too explicable: From Stanley Hornbeck, special advisor to FDR’s Secretary of State Cordell Hull, the longest serving Secretary of State in U.S. history, to J. William Fullbright, senator and longest tenured Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (1945-1974), to JFK and LBJ’s Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and Walt Rostow, LBJ’s National Security Advisor: these men were among the most influential hands steering U.S. foreign policy from the 1930s onward.

Later architects of U.S. policy to pass through Oxford via the program include Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations and Director of Policy Planning for George W. Bush (2001-2003), Joseph Nye, chair of the National Intelligence Council and Deputy Secretary of Defense under Bill Clinton3 (1993-1995), Strobe Talbot, Deputy Secretary of State and lead architect of Clinton’s Russia and NATO expansion policies (1994-2001), Susan Rice, Barack Obama’s National Security Advisor (2013-2017), Ash Carter, Secretary of Defense under Obama (2015-2017), and arguably the worst U.S. Ambassador to Russia ever, Michael McFaul (2012-2014).

As an aside, given the catastrophic performance of these later figures it is worth noting that apart from absorbing British principles of imperial strategy—the work of the Oxonian Halford Mackinder (1861-1947) clearly having influenced that of the foundational American realist Nicholas Spykman (1893-1943), who in turn greatly influenced John Foster Dulles (Dwight Eisenhower’s Secretary of State from 1953-1959)—American policy architects seem to have also imbibed the abiding British suspicion of the Russians, as well as their tactics for dealing with the “barbarians,” as the aforementioned ex-Ambassador McFaul described them on Twitter a week ago.

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It’s Taxing

Posted by M. C. on June 13, 2023

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“Our Trophies”: Russia Shows Off Captured Leopard Tank, Bradley Vehicles – With Engines Still Running

Posted by M. C. on June 13, 2023

But the US says it will not be deterred in its commitment to keep supplying miliary hardware to Ukraine. US state-backed Voice of America reported Monday, “The United States is providing up to $325 million in additional military aid for Ukraine, a U.S. defense official tells VOA.”

More and more media outlets throughout the morning have confirmed the new Russian MoD footage as authentic:

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/our-trophies-russia-shows-captured-leopard-tank-bradley-vehicles-engines-still-running

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BY TYLER DURDEN

The Russian Defense Ministry (MoD) says its troops have captured NATO-supplied armor in the Zaporizhia region, some of which appear to have been hastily abandoned by fleeing Ukrainian soldiers.

The MoD released footage of Russian troops inspecting a German-made Leopard 2 main battle tank and US-produced Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, which are said to be still intact, some with engines still running. The Russian military declared that the Western-supplied heavy armored vehicles are “our trophies“. WATCH the official Russian military footage below:

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To Reach Peace, Teach Peace

Posted by M. C. on June 13, 2023

The problem is not limited to the laity. A Catholic priest once told me that in seminary he spent exactly one afternoon learning about “Just War,” one afternoon in seven years, and he never learned anything about nonviolence. Some priests think nonviolence is a Quaker thing or a “60s” thing or a sign of the feminization of the Church.

To Reach Peace, Teach Peace

By Ellen Finnigan

This is the story behind my new class Bread Alone: A Contemplative Study of The Hunger Games for Christians, how it came to be, and why Christian parents might want to enroll in it, alongside their teenage children, this summer.

In The Harvest of Justice is Sown in Peace (1993), the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote: “An essential component of a spirituality for peacemaking is an ethic for dealing with conflict in a sinful world. The Christian tradition possesses two ways to address conflict: nonviolence and just war…Throughout history there has been a shifting relation between the two streams of the tradition which always remain in tension.”

If there is any tension between these two streams of the tradition, it exists only in the most erudite circles of the Church, in my opinion. While teaching ancient literature to high school freshmen at a classical Catholic school for ten years, I discussed themes of war, violence, and murder with my students on a weekly basis: Their ideas, perspectives, and assumptions could hardly be distinguished from those of the most worldly secular humanists. It wasn’t their fault: There was no “tension” in their minds about the two traditions because they didn’t know anything about them.

The problem is not limited to kids. Most adults cannot tell you the criteria of the “Just War” doctrine. Some Catholics can tell you that such a doctrine exists — but that’s it. Back when the The Hunger Games films were first released, I noticed something curious about Catholic reviews (which I wrote about at LRC here). To summarize: Catholic film critics “saw very little about the central human problem of war in this wildly popular film that was, in the words of its Roman Catholic author, written about war, and after a decade of living under a government that is perpetually waging war.” It was a massive blindspot.

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The Great Betrayal of June 8, 1967: Israel’s Attack on the USS Liberty is Never Mentioned by the US Political Establishment and the Mainstream Media

Posted by M. C. on June 13, 2023

Another foreign friend, along with Saudi Arabia. Remember the joke about how to get money from US? Go to war against US and lose. Now all it takes is to attack US.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/great-betrayal-67-us-political-establishment-mainstream-media-israel-deliberate-attack-uss-liberty-is-never-mentioned-question-why/5821583

By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Global Research

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

*** 

Fifty-Six Years Ago, June 8, 1967

With a very few exceptions, it’s barely mentioned in the mainstream media whether it’s CNN, MSNBC, FOX news, The New York Times, or the Washington Post. It is never mentioned in public school history books and forget Hollywood, no movie would ever be produced on that tragic day since Zionists conspirators run the movie industry. And of course, the most treasonous people to their own country, the Israeli-controlled US political establishment would never dare mention what happened on June 8th, 1967 when America’s most treasured ally, the ‘Jewish State’ of Israel attacked the USS Liberty, a US Navy technical research ship which was basically a spy ship, killing 34 and injured over 171 crew members including marines, US Naval personal including officers, seamen and even a civilian employee from the National Security Agency (NSA).

The attack on the USS Liberty happened during the height of the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab world that included Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and to an extent Iraq, however, the US had claimed ‘neutral status’ and was in international waters towards the north of the Sinai Peninsula before the war had even started.

Then the USS Liberty was ordered to sail towards the eastern Mediterranean Sea to collect intelligence close to the north coast of Sinai, Egypt. During their mission, the Israel Air Force (IAF) had flown over the USS Liberty supposedly searching for Egyptian submarines that was previously located near the coast. At around 2 pm, the IAF sent two Mirage III fighter jets to monitor the USS Liberty which the Israelis say had no “distinguishable markings” or any flag on the ship which was a lie and then the Mirage fighters opened fire on the USS Liberty.

Here is where it gets complicated, right before the attack, the Mirage fighter jets, codename Kursa had communicated with an Israeli command post weapons systems officer, air controllers and a chief air controller who reportedly questioned whether there was a US ship in the area, so at around 1:57 pm, the chief air controller, Lieutenant-Colonel Shmuel Kislev gave the orders to attack the USS Liberty.

The Israeli fighter jets unleashed 30-mm cannons, rockets, and napalm thus killing and injuring many of the US crew members. The Israelis even managed to jam-up the US communications systems right before the attack which means that the Israelis knew that it was an American Naval ship. On top of the Israeli fighter jets already attacking the USS Liberty, there were three additional Israeli torpedo boats who also launched an attack on the ship with cannons, mounted machine guns and torpedoes. One of the torpedo’s killed 25 crew members instantly. The Israeli torpedo boats also targeted life rafts as the crew tried to abandon the ship.

It was clear that Israel and the Lyndon B. Johnson regime wanted no witnesses who could have exposed Israel’s attack to the American public.

How do we know this?

At 3:15, two Israeli helicopters armed with IDF soldiers were most likely supposed to kill the remaining US naval survivors, for whatever reason, that did not happen. Meanwhile, the ship was still under an immense attack as the crew called for help through open lines of communications. Two US Naval ships, the USS Saratoga and the USS America received the message and ordered US fighter jets to rescue the ship from the attack, but in a rather strange move, the mission was called off by Washington.

Israel also knew that the US fighter jets were ordered to stop the attack from an intercepted transmission. So they immediately called off their attack and recalled their torpedo boats and helicopters. Then the Israeli government notified Washington that they “mistakenly” attacked an American ship and told them that they had ordered its fighter jets to return back to their airbase.

Call it what you want, but it is a legitimate conspiracy fact that US President Lyndon B. Johnson and his Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara halted a rescue mission to save the remaining survivors.

It seems that it was a false-flag operation to get the US to enter the conflict and support Israel at all costs against several Arab countries. A high-ranking official by the name of Admiral L. R. Geis, who was the commander of the Sixth Fleet carrier force told Lt. Commander, David Lewis of the USS Liberty that he challenged McNamara’s orders to cancel the rescue operation. It was reported that McNamara responded by saying that “President Johnson is not going to go to war or embarrass an American ally over a few sailors.” A communications officer, J.Q. “Tony” Hart from a U.S. Navy communications relay station in Morocco oversaw the entire transmission, also gave the same testimony.

There were multiple investigations on what happened to the USS Liberty, and of course, both the US and Israeli governments declared that it was a “mistake”, but crew members said it was deliberate. Who was right? The crew members of course, but no one knows about their experiences because these same politicians who claim they care about their military veterans never mention what happened on that day.

It’s an important day to remember. So, the question we must ask is why most people in the US don’t know what happened on June 8th, 1967? Every single politician, whether they are presidents, senators, the US congress, governors, etc., no one ever mentions the Israeli attack on the USS liberty. Do these same politicians and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) consider it “Anti-Semitic” to mention what happened on that day? I would have to say, yes.

The Chicago Tribune’s 2007 Article

On October 7th, 2007, The Chicago Tribune published a controversial story called ‘New Revelations in Attack on American Spy ship‘, although there was nothing to suggest that it was a “new revelation” since the veterans or shall we call them victims of the USS liberty attack have been speaking out since the day it happened. However, the Chicago Tribune did report on the anger and betrayal felt by the USS Liberty veterans by their government on behalf of their most treasured ally, Israel “that it never intercepted the communications of the attacking Israeli pilots — communications, according to those who remember seeing them, that showed the Israelis knew they were attacking an American naval vessel.” Was there a joint cover-up by Washington and Tel Aviv? You decide, “The documents also suggest that the U.S. government, anxious to spare Israel’s reputation and preserve its alliance with the U.S., closed the case with what even some of its participants now say was a hasty and seriously flawed investigation.” The National Security Agency (NSA) also made itself conveniently neutral on the matter:

In declassifying the most recent and largest batch of materials last June 8, the 40th anniversary of the attack, the NSA, this country’s chief U.S. electronic-intelligence-gatherer and code-breaker, acknowledged that the attack had “become the center of considerable controversy and debate.” It was not the agency’s intention, it said, “to prove or disprove any one set of conclusions, many of which can be drawn from a thorough review of this material,” available here.

One of the most absurd explanations on the USS Liberty attack was published in the Jewish Virtual Library by a New York born and former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren who published ‘The USS Liberty Incident: “The USS Liberty: Case Closed’. Of course, Oren’s claims that the media, journalists and even websites who exposed the attack on the USS Liberty are anti-Semitic hatemongers and Arab propagandists:

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CIA Finally Admits to Hand in Iraq Detainee’s Death

Posted by M. C. on June 12, 2023

Navy SEALs were punished for 2003 death of Manadel al-Jamadi while he was under CIA interrogation

For the Navy SEALs and other military special operations troops, the message was clear: When things go wrong on missions involving the CIA, the agency will fight for its people; the military won’t always do the same. 

Either way, it won’t be the CIA that takes the blame. 

https://www.spytalk.co/p/cia-finally-admits-to-hand-in-iraq

SETH HETTENA

For years now, the CIA and the Navy SEALs have worked side-by-side on highly-classified missions battling terrorists around the globe. 

When things go right, the result can be nothing short of spectacular. The daring 2011 Navy mission into Pakistan that resulted in the death of Al Qaeda kingpin Osama bin Laden was not only a miraculous success but a publicity coup for both the CIA and the members of SEAL Team Six that led the raid. Both revelled in the glory.

When things go wrong, however, the blame is not always equally shared. A case in point: the death of  an Iraqi insurgent in U.S. hands in Iraq.

The CIA and the SEALs follow different rules, report to different chains of command, and are ultimately accountable to two different systems of justice. How those two different systems play out when things go wrong is a theme of a book I’m writing on the death of Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi insurgent captured by the SEALs in 2003.

Jamadi’s name may not be familiar, but there’s a good chance you’ve seen his face. His beaten and bloodied visage appeared in some of the nightmarish images from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Photos showed U..S soldiers giving a thumbs-up over Jamadi’s ice-packed corpse. The title of my book comes from a nickname the guards gave the dead prisoner, The Ice Man.

US Army soldier Sabrina Harman was court-martialed for prisoner abuse after the 2003–2004 Abu Ghraib scandal. Here she is with the iced-up corpse of Manadel al-Jamadi, who died under CIA interrogation. Selfies like this were seized by U.S. Army / Criminal Investigation Command.

U.S. Army guards in the prison reported that CIA personnel had stood by idly while Jamadi died. Internal CIA documents I’ve obtained show that a military pathologist concluded that the position Jamadi was placed in was “part and parcel” of a homicide. He had been suspended by his wrists, which were handcuffed behind his back. One guard said he was surprised that Jamadi’s shoulders didn’t “pop out of their sockets.”

Someone had to be held accountable for this disaster. It turned out to b the Navy SEALs.

Even though the only people in the room when Jamadi died were a CIA polygraph examiner on temporary duty in Iraq and a translator (agency unknown), the ones held accountable in Jamadi’s death were members of the SEAL platoon that captured him in a top-secret, direct-action mission. 

The charges against the SEALs centered on allegations that they had kicked and punched Jamadi on the way back to their base when he refused to stop talking. The SEALs were hauled into military court and threatened with prison for abusing—but not killing—Jamadi and posing for pictures with him. Most received administrative discipline. One officer was acquitted at court-martial.

Evidence gathered during the proceedings revealed that the CIA had conducted brutal interrogations of detainees. Detainees were slapped, choked, subjected to terrifying mock assaults, doused with cold water, and had their joints stretched in painful ways, according to classified testimony from the SEALs I obtained for my book. One former SEAL told me that a CIA interrogator had used a large wooden mallet to frighten a prisoner by smashing it into the plywood wall near his outstretched hand. 

Although the SEALs didn’t know it, this was a rogue interrogation program. Months before the news media’s  exposure of its torture program, CIA headquarters had sent a detailed cable to the Baghdad station that spelled out limits on what agency personnel in Iraq could and couldn’t do in interrogations. “Enhanced” interrogation techniques were forbidden. The guidance in the cables was ignored. 

“Either some people … didn’t understand it, or chose in the heat of battle to go beyond it,” former acting General Counsel John Rizzo told the Constitution Project’s Task Force on Detainee Treatment. Rizzo died in 2021.  

The CIA’s role in Jamadi’s death was investigated by prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Alexandria, Virginia, led by Paul McNulty and Chuck Rosenberg, and Special Counsel John Durham. Prosecutors declined to file charges in both instances and no one at the CIA was ever held publicly accountable. The CIA station chief and two officers “were fired because they went beyond the guidelines,” Rizzo said. 

News accounts tell a different story. The station chief, Gerry Meyer, “resigned rather than take a demotion,” the Associated Press reported. “Steve, a CIA officer who ran the detainee unit there, received a letter of reprimand,” former officials told the A.P. David Martine, chief of the CIA’s Detention Elicitation Cell in Iraq, who was suspected of destroying evidence connected to Jamadi’s death, was also allowed to resign.

David Martine, a former FBI agent and CIA officer suspected of destroying evidence after Jamadi’s death, retired honorably after a 30-year career. But he was fired from Gannon University in Erie, PA in 2015 after his respectful remarks about torture’s efficacy were published in Newsweek.(Jeff Stein photo)

With help from attorneys at Loevy & Loevy, a Chicago-based firm specializing in civil rights and whistleblower cases, I filed a pair of lawsuits against the CIA to force it to disclose what happened to the Ice Man and the findings of an internal disciplinary board that reviewed the case. 

Last week, the CIA produced a heavily redacted memo, dated June 22, 2007, in response to my lawsuit. 

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California Bill Would Punish Parents For Misgendering Children

Posted by M. C. on June 12, 2023

Weiner is also pushing a bill which would require foster parents to affirm the identity of children who identify as transgender.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/california-bill-would-punish-parents-misgendering-their-own-children

Tyler Durden's Photo

BY TYLER DURDEN

A proposed amendment to a California bill would brand parents who refuse to affirm their own child’s gender as ‘abusive,’ and could result in loss of custody.

California Democratic Assemblymember Lori Wilson

Proposed by Democratic Assemblymember Lori Wilson and state Senator Scott Weiner (who last year suggested “offering Drag Queen 101 as part of the K-12 curriculum, introduced a bill that grants judicial leniency to certain pedophiles, and who was accused of a hate-crime hoax), AB957 amends the state Family Code addressing the “health, safety and welfare of the child” in every household.

California state Senator Scott Weiner (D)

As the Daily Mail notes, if passed, the law could result in children being removed from their parents’ home if family members are deemed ‘anti-LGBTQ+.’

The bill was originally passed on May 3, but was Amended June 3. by Weiner where it will need to pass again with revisions.

Under the code, courts would be given complete authority to remove children from their homes if their parents refuse to affirm their gender. It would also require schools, churches and other organizations to follow suit or face repercussions for ‘impacting the health, safety and welfare of [a] child.’

Individuals and organizations who refuse or do not acknowledge a child’s gender identity could potentially face abuse charges, however, a spokesperson for Rep. Wilson’s office said the bill only applies to family law and not criminal law. 

The revisions have already been slammed by those who say the state should not step into private residences to monitor each child’s gender and their parents’ response. 

Nicole Peterson, founder of Facts Law Truth Justice, told the Daily Signal that the law is ‘horrifying’ and troublesome for parents everywhere. 

‘If a parent or guardian is unwilling or simply not ready to affirm their 7-year-old’s new identity — as they transition from Spongebob to Batman to Dora the Explorer — they can be found guilty of child abuse under AB-957 if it passes into law,’ she said. -Daily Mail

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How Does The Fed Work? … Secretly

Posted by M. C. on June 12, 2023

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A Capital Offense

Posted by M. C. on June 12, 2023

Whenever I see the word black capitalized in academic books that praise a black person or persons, I think of Doctor Johnson’s remark about women preachers: They are like a dog walking on hind legs. It is not well done, but one is surprised to find it done at all. There is an underlying, subconscious (but perhaps not entirely unconscious) quality of despite-ness about the praise in academic books. Despite being black, he or she did or achieved this or that… In other words, one wouldn’t really have expected it.

A Capital Offense

Theodore Dalrymple

Theodore Dalrymple

Last week I reviewed a book published by an American academic press—it hardly matters the title or author, for in the respect to which I wish to draw your attention they are almost all the same these days. With few exceptions, they capitalize the word black when it refers to a person, while keeping white (or brown) in the lower case.

This is no doubt a fashion, but it does not seem a purely spontaneous one. If there is no central enforcement, there might as well be one. The presses have been invaded by the termites of wokeness so thoroughly that there is no need of central direction.

It is unlikely in any case that the authors put up much of a fight, if any, against the imposition; most of them probably don’t even see it as an imposition. I suspect, however, that any author who did want to resist the fashion would soon be faced by a stiff fight, which he would probably lose. His desire to be published would overcome his scruples on a matter of principle.

To me, however, the fashion has all the hallmarks of a profound but unacknowledged racism. It is as if those who insist upon this usage—the monstrous regiment of subeditors—are determined to prove just how sympathetic they are to black people, past, present, and to come. As Queen Gertrude would have put it, methinks the subeditors do protest too much.

It reveals that the subeditors of the presses, and possibly many of the authors, do not believe that blacks are just another group of human beings like any other group, but special: special in their need to be condescended to, or special in their inability to make their own way, and therefore in need of special protection, like giant pandas or the Tasmanian devil. In other words, there is a subconscious, but not very deeply subconscious, belief in their inferiority, for which nothing but such protection by, and condescension of, good, kind, and generous people (and bureaucracies) can compensate.

Now the history of group ascension in the United States (and elsewhere) suggests that the groups are capable of improving their lot, if rising in the social scale counts as improvement. Nations, too, can rise (and fall) in the pecking order, not by the benevolent aid of others, and even in the face of hostility.

It is true, of course, that blacks in America have faced many generations of ill treatment, but such prejudice as now exists against them is not legal but the kind of informal social prejudice that is common throughout history. They also benefit from prejudice in their favor, which may in the long run be more harmful to them than prejudice against.

Surely no one, whatever he thinks of the situation of blacks in America today, can seriously suppose that the capitalization of the word black to categorize them will improve their situation in any tangible, or even intangible, way. (My view is that, if it has any effect at all, it will have the reverse effect, by constantly drawing attention to their different moral or intellectual status from whites.)

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