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.

She chose to share, and thereby impress. Pronouns, obviously.

Update, via the comments:

Given Ms Vilkomerson’s ostentatiously woke outpourings elsewhere, I think we can assume that, whether true or fabricated, said tweet was intended to both amuse and be met with approval. A bit of peer-group positioning, The key part being the modish dismissal of “white boys.” (Sort of, “See, I’ve taught my daughter to disdain whiteness and masculinity. How brave I am.”) That said tweet conveys other things, and unintended ironies, seems to have escaped Ms Vilkomerson.

As public boasts go, it’s quite a strange thing. I mean, you can imagine a proud parent announcing that their fourteen-year-old had passed a chemistry exam or reached piano grade three or something. But wanting to announce that your fourteen-year-old has internalised pretentious disdain for white people, and white men in particular, seems… obnoxiously unhinged. That this is apparently something statusful, a basis for applause, or at least in-group belonging, does not make it seem less so.

Via Rafi.

Or, Our Betters Breathe Deeply – Into A Paper Bag: 

Mr Tiedrich tweets about Donald Trump many times, every day. And Ms Vee meditates, you know. 

Update, via the comments:

Jen quips, “They’re going to miss him.”

Well, I suppose that if your peer group is one that requires endless, competitive signalling – via breathless claims of how monstrous and fascistic the current incumbent of the White House is, and how mentally debilitating even thinking about him is, which you nonetheless do, every day, of course – then the prospect of losing that object of hate, and status, must be a cause of… mixed feelings. Though it’s quite odd how the people who imagine themselves our political betters, the ones to whom we should defer, are very often neurotic monomaniacs whose minds seem bizarrely fragile and forever on the verge of coming undone. 

Update 2:

It didn’t go as planned and was a tad embarrassing. || Bee rears. || A brief history of peanut butter. || Goldfish playing football. || Formal wear, I guess. || Indoor weather detected. || When the delightful scenery attacks you. || And who here wouldn’t? (h/t, Julia) || “We hope you are as excited as we are.” || Today’s words are “angry cock energy.” || Assorted background noises. (h/t, Things) || Upmarket scented bubbles. || At last, a Rubik’s Cube movie. || Modernity is a hell of a thing. || The thrill of car park security footage. (h/t, Elephants Gerald) || The joys of public transport, part 276. || Tokyo’s museum of parasites. || A brief history of the violin bow. || Noisy birds. || And finally, activate black polo-neck.

And so, as the novelty wears thin, and we once again daub our doors with lamb’s blood, let us share links and bicker. 

I’ll set the ball rolling with a woke prayer, some emotional scenes, and a reminder that size matters. 

As some of you may be shopping from home a little more than usual, please bear in mind that any Amazon UK shopping done via this link or the search widget top right, or for Amazon US via this link, results in a small fee for your host at no extra cost to you.

It does help to keep this place here.

For those in need of further diversion, the Reheated series is there to be poked at. 

As we gingerly lower our buttocks into the hot bath of ’21, spare a thought for the Guardian’s Afua Hirsch and her statusful associates:

A conversation I had recently with a black woman who wields enormous power in the TV industry sums it up for me. She and I were meeting from our respective bedrooms in the now familiar, strange intimacy of a one-on-one Zoom meeting. She has developed a massive rash all over her boobs.

The cause of this rash? Well, this is the Guardian. And so, 

“It’s years of bullshit – racism, micro-aggressions,” she told me in a matter-of-fact tone. “I have never had any eczema before. My doctor said it’s erupted now because I’ve finally given myself permission to acknowledge the toxic stuff I’ve been putting up with during all these decades of my career.”

Readers are invited to ponder whether a reputable GP, one fit for employment, would actually diagnose racist microaggressions as the most obvious cause of boob eczema. Rather than, say, suggesting a change of bra or detergent. It does sound both improbable and awfully specific, as if tailored to the preoccupations of a tiresome monomaniac. But clearly this is something that Ms Hirsch is quite eager to believe, or at least have us believe, and is presented as damning evidence of both “structural racism” and, simultaneously, the urgent need to pathologise “whiteness.” It’s also, apparently, a reason to denounce a government minister who dares to question whether pretentious victimhood is an optimal life goal.

For Ms Hirsch, microaggression boob rash “sums it up.”

Via the Lancastrian Oik.

In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.

The year began with a display of the Guardian’s famed sense of proportion, with the paper’s Barbara Ellen informing us, emphatically, that, “We’re nearly all vegan now” – we being the general population – before asking with equal confidence, “Who isn’t vegan in some way these days?” The Vegan Society, meanwhile, acknowledged that the demographic in question amounts to barely 1% of the British population. Hungry for more fearless and irrefutable leftwing journalism, we turned to the pages of Salon, where the chronically breathless Mr Chauncey DeVega declared that “The American people” – and not just Salon columnists – “are in a manic state because of Trump’s regime.” 300 million citizens are, we learned, living in fear of Mr Trump’s “fascism,” his allegedly annihilationist tendencies, and of course his “secret police.”

Meanwhile, Slate readers mulled the moral quandaries of progressive life, before being rewarded with somewhat peculiar and potentially disastrous advice, on subjects including sex tapes and prodigious weight gain. And via which, we learned that the best way for an insecure straight woman to find romantic and sexual satisfaction is for her to start dating polyamorists and gay people, on grounds that this will ease both her trust issues and her frequent panic attacks.

In February, we learned, via the Guardian, of the latest must-have status accessory – namely, dinner parties at which one pays $2,500 to be scolded as a racist, an upholder of “white supremacy,” based on nothing, by someone suitably brown and opportunist. Participants – “mostly Democrats” – are told to “own their racism,” however invisible, and are warned against having “unmonitored thoughts.” Elsewhere in the Guardian, we were assured by leader writer Susanna Rustin that a “reordering of society” is in order, to correct the apparently unendurable problem of some people having a standard of living not yet available to every single human being on the planet. “Lives of luxury” – defined by “weekly shopping sprees” – could be “replaced” – “painlessly” – with “artistic expression and creativity,” specifically, dance lessons.

While in Salon, Bay Area progressive Nicole Karlis wrote of the “heartache, tears and stress” brought on by the loss of one’s plastic water bottle. A sentiment echoed by fellow progressives and non-specific activists, who shared their wrenching tales of “water-bottle separation anxiety,” a phenomenon that can apparently induce fits of weeping and feelings of “falling into chaos.”

In March, readers of the Observer were invited to ponder the profound moral question, “Is it ever acceptable for a feminist to hire a cleaner?” Much fretting ensued regarding the acceptable sex and skin colour of the person doing the cleaning, with the paper’s Sally Howard deciding that the most feminist way to empower cleaning ladies – and to avoid the “structural devaluation of women’s work” – is to make said ladies unemployed. The views of Ms Howard’s former cleaners, fired in the name of feminism, were not deemed worthy of inclusion.