In Mexico, Rodrigo Iván Cortés, a former Congressman of that country, has been convicted of “political violence” for social media posts on gender, referring to Mexican Congressional representative as “man who self-ascribes as a woman”. In addition to a fine, he has been sentenced to publish an apology (written by the court) on his social media accounts, daily for 30 days. He was also was entered into the National Registry of Persons Sanctioned in Political Matters against Women. A petition has been filed on his behalf with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. See also this Twitter post.
Responding to a post from Claire Lehmann about her kids coming home from school and being required to write letters of apology for colonization and ‘wrecking the planet’, Greg Ashman remarked that this sort of thing was dismissed circa 2015 as just ‘fringe American campus politics’, but that but it inevitably came for Australian school rooms.
Indeed, Wokeness has spread around the world with amazing speed…and now, apparently, has gainedd a significant lodging in Mexico. Yet how many people in that country..among the elites of that country..really believe the full party line about there being no real differences between men and women? Very few, I would hazard a guess. Yet they seem quite happy to go along with the enforcement of those beliefs on their population.
Yet perhaps there is hope for a turnaround. A Canadian nurse reports on Twitter:
I was seeing a therapist who said most of her clients have become professionals who are deeply unhappy with DEI & woke culture at work. They feel afraid of speaking up, but are sick of the constant barrage of racist, delusional nonsense they’re supposed to champion. It is making people miserable & fearful. It is making people leave careers, or get forced out for infractions. Organizations still clinging to DEI are making a terrible mistake.
There seem to be a lot of reactions like this developing. Things that might sound all right as catch-phrases often don’t seem so good when people see and feel them working out themselves in practice. And much of the support for Wokeness seems to represent Preference Falsification, at some level…people not really being comfortable with those assertions, but going along with them because they believe that everyone else (in circles that matter to them) believes in the assertions. And when cracks in the wall of apparent unanimity begin the appear, the Preference Cascade in the other direction can change things quickly.
“It is making people miserable & fearful.”
Just like the Red Guard, as you say. Until it makes them miserable and angry, I suspect the new DeiGuard will keep its sway.
One suspects that the Cultural Revolution might have unfolded differently if guns had been as widely distributed in China as they are here.
If that multi-gender Woke nonsense has come to super-macho Mexico, its tentacles have spread wide, if not deep.
When I was a high school student at a language institute in Mexico, boys who had gone three months without a haircut got harassed on the street. I also recall that “india” (indian woman) was synonymous with “prostitute” in super-tolerant, super-inclusive Mexico.
Like the Rolling Stones song says, “Kids are different today (I hear every mother say)…”
I find it rather ironic that Mexican higher-ups (intellectuals?) have imitated the latest Gringo fad, such as Wokeness, and then proceeded to impose the latest Gringo fad on the rest of Mexican society. Nationalist? Not very. Like they say: “Mexico, so far from God and so near to the United States.” :)
Seems that every other blog post uses X/Twitter. It would appear that X/Twitter is going great guns, in spite of lefty attempts to run it into the ground.
“One suspects that the Cultural Revolution might have unfolded differently if guns had been as widely distributed in China as they are here”.
The body count would have been higher, for sure — but the Red Guards did a good job of killing people anyway, including many other Red Guards. There may be a parallel between what happened in the US in the 1960s as the Baby Boomers grew into teenagers and the use (misuse?) of Chinese teenagers by Mao. What happens when teenagers anywhere are encouraged to reject authority?
There are some interesting autobiographical accounts of the experiences of Chinese teenagers as Red Guards. Maybe the best is “Gang of One” by Fan Shen. “Blood Red Sunset” by Ma Bo tells an angry tale. “Red Sorrow” by Nanchu makes for sad reading. For anyone with the stomach, “The World Turned Upside Down” by Yang Jisheng lays out the whole story of the Cultural Revolution.
It is an open question whether today’s overweight, under-educated, indoctrinated Western teenagers could ever perpetrate the deeds and endure the suffering that those unfortunate Chinese teenagers lived through. Let’s hope we never find out.
To David’s point regarding DEI and Woke, I have seen similar behavior in higher education with numerous professor and other academic professors, people we would classify as Left, disgusted with that ideology.
I don’t think there is much “support” for it as much as there is acquiescence or just plain going along. For many people, especially academicians, they have worked long and hard to get to the elite position that they are in and when faced with a choice of giving up that status or toeing the Woke/DEI-line as simply another accommodation to the workplace culture, they will choose the latter. As an addition the reason for certain types of repression such as UPenn with Amy Wax and the College of Psychologists of Ontario with Jordan Peterson is to show the consequences of not following in line. If I was Bill Ackman, I would not be accepting any gift boxes of wine before getting on my private jet.
This choice of “silver or lead” is a common theme in repressive and gangster societies. Part of its repressive power is that everyone, outside of David’s Red Guards, know it’s garbage but they make you submit anyway.
Another dimension of this is class, Woke/DEI ideology primarily affects the workplace of the professional and college-educated, which has been aligning with the Left, while those opposing it are on the Right. That ideological split is really a class split and those who wish to oppose Woke/DEI not only risk being cast out professionally but also socially as someone sympathetic to those MAGA White Supremacist Christian Nationalists… Ick.
To my earlier point regarding conformity in the pursuit of DEI/Woke goals, N.S. Lyons wrote (https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/poland-and-the-demon-in-democracy)
“Liberalism is in reality an ideology of friend and enemy. Either one is for the utopian liberal project, or against it. No other categories can be seriously considered or permitted. And as the liberal project continually fails – as it must – to produce utopia, liberalism finds itself more and more desperately hunting for the shadowy ranks of non-liberal saboteurs that must be undermining the progress of the revolution. Legutko reflects on how both communists and liberals have displayed the same peculiar tendency: to somehow hold simultaneously to the idea that their ideals are invincible and will inevitably triumph at the end of history, and that they are a small, vulnerable, victimized, and desperately embattled minority. “
Mike:
Mike quotes N.S.Lyons:
Assistant Village Idiot has had a number of postings on Tribes. Well worth the visits- or revisit. Assistant Village Idiot: Tribes Series – Most Visited Posts.
I first became aware of political beliefs aligning with group affiliation/friends/tribes in high school, so am not surprised at the above.
part of the problem in mexico is most of the traditional opposition party was discredited, that would be the PAN, the previous party the PRI advanced alongside the Green Party,
now in the social sphere, it would seem like the Zapatistas, who were crushed thereabout in 95, by the Airborne forces, some of whom became the Zetas have taken over,