Speaking of narcissism:

“Activist, feminist, author.” Pronouns, obviously. Via Darleen. Consider this an open thread, in which to share links and bicker.

An Antifa mob tried to stop police from responding to an armed man threatening to harm others and himself in downtown Portland on Friday afternoon.

I can’t help feeling there’s something rather telling about what follows:

Officers from the Portland Police Bureau responded to calls to the 300-block area of Southwest 4th Avenue after a 30-year-old man reportedly jumped from the second story window of the apartment complex, pulled out a knife and brandished the blade at people and cars passing by. According to police, the unnamed man is schizophrenic and threatened to kill himself.

Portland Police sent in its Enhanced Crisis Intervention Team but was interrupted and threatened by hostile Antifa protesters who had already been gathering nearby at Powell’s Books calling for Andy Ngo’s upcoming book [on Antifa] to be banned. “The extra noise and distraction made it impossible for the specially trained officers to speak to the man,” said the Portland Police in a press statement. “Officers implored the crowd to stop interfering, but their energy only increased.”

Note that, being our betters, they had to make the situation about themselves. Of course, the Antifa clowns’ self-absorbed screeching and jeering – their refusal to be quiet so that negotiation could be attempted – made the subsequent use of force more likely, not less. 

Police say the suicidal man’s mother arrived on scene and pleaded with the mob to disperse but they ignored her. 

Because they care, you see. 

Well, here’s a thing. It turns out that “white supremacy” is surprisingly diverse. Or, as the Washington Post’s headline puts it, 

To Understand Trump’s support, we must think in terms of multiracial Whiteness.

The author of what follows, Ms Cristina Beltrán, is “an associate professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University.” Her areas of expertise are needless to say sweeping and numerous, extending from “feminist theory” to “Latinx, and race & gender politic,” because “Latinx” and “politic” is how we do things now. Being a leftist academic, Ms Beltrán is of course mystified by the existence of non-white Trump supporters and, by extension, non-white people who dare to deviate from her own leftist assumptions. And so, inevitably, contortions ensue: 

What are we to make of… Latino voters inspired by Trump? And what are we to make of unmistakably White mob violence that also includes non-White participants? I call this phenomenon multiracial whiteness — the promise that they, too, can lay claim to the politics of aggression, exclusion and domination.

Given last year’s scenes of rioting, looting and generally feral behaviour, and the feats of illogic to excuse such things – to say nothing of crime statistics over the last fifty years – the conceit that non-white people have somehow been excluded from participation in “mob violence” and “the politics of aggression” is faintly comical. But Ms Beltrán is not a woman to be impeded by observable reality, and hurries instead to list the many shortcomings of Donald Trump, whose seductive powers are, it would seem, dark and diabolical:

Trump… knows nothing of the history of Latinos in the United States and rarely even pretends to find value in Latinos’ distinct identities. Rather than offering his non-White voters recognition, Trump has offered them multiracial whiteness.

If the concept of “multiracial whiteness” sounds a tad unobvious and contrived, Ms Beltrán elaborates:

Multiracial whiteness reflects an understanding of whiteness as a political colour and not simply a racial identity — a discriminatory worldview in which feelings of freedom and belonging are produced through the persecution and dehumanisation of others.

“Multiracial whiteness” is, we’re told, “rooted in… indigenous dispossession and anti-blackness,” and is “a form of hierarchy in which the standing of one section of the population is premised on the debasement of others.” Motives that are perhaps more obvious than persecution, a little more mundane, are simply not considered. Readers may also wish to ponder how a distaste for racial preoccupation is framed, rather boldly, as “a discriminatory worldview.”

Look away now. || I laughed and I’m not sorry. || Maybe a bath. || Giant cat roams British countryside. || Today’s word is suboptimal. || Does both ends, you know. || He does this better than you do. || High drama. || Kinship detected. (h/t, Julia) || The thrill of fertilisation. || Modern fretting. || Wait for it. || You want one and you know it. || At last, an hour of whale probe ambience. || First-person parkour with balloons and monkeys. || Tape recorders of yore. (h/t, Things) || Light and layered glass. || More glamourous than thou. || It has “autonomous steaming technology.” || Snow in Nagano. || Not a lot happened, then quite a lot did. || And finally, the heroic intervention didn’t go entirely to plan.

A third-grade teacher at R.I. Meyerholz Elementary School began the lesson on “social identities” during a math class.

But of course. You see, for some primary-school teachers, conveying the basics of arithmetic and fractions isn’t sufficiently sexy or particularly statusful. Marxoid pronouncements on “power and privilege,” however, and sermons on how straight white men are oppressing everyone else, are much more flattering to the ego of a leftist educator.

And after all, those pretentious resentments, the ones you hope to exploit, won’t cultivate themselves. Oh, and apparently, transgenderism and “nonbinary sexuality” are suitable classroom topics for the modern eight-year-old.

What, you didn’t know?

Nor did the parents.

Update, via the comments, where Karen adds,

Today’s word is ‘fraud’.

Given the apparent indifference to parental approval – one might call it subterfuge – you do have to wonder exactly how much class time has been wasted on ‘projects’ of this kind. Or would have been, had parents not discovered what their children were actually being taught instead of mathematics.

And it is, I think, interesting just how often these things occur without the knowledge or consent of the parents whose children are being indoctrinated and psychologically abused, as if such details didn’t matter. As if the children weren’t theirs.

Note too how readily parental umbrage is framed as “divisive.” As if the problem were the parents, not the ideologically possessed educators.