I’m really fed up with being gaslit. Our whole culture, in the West at least, is rotten through with lying-as-norm.
Pick an example, any example. I’m going with butch Jesus and blue smurf Dionysus because when I posted about this on social media today, a New York Times reading acquaintance tried to correct me with a very sophisticated lie, and it annoyed me enough for me to go fishing on the internet to get to the bottom of things.
As everyone with internet access knows by now, on Friday night the Paris Olympic Games opened with a drag cabaret fashion show interpretation of Da Vinci’s famous Last Supper tableau (la Cène in French). The scene featured LGBTQ+ icon Barbara Butch as Jesus, accompanied by apostles in drag, and with a musical performance by blue smurf Dionysus.
Christians were offended, upset and shocked, tweeting angry things and condemning the scene in statements. American tech company C Spire announced it was pulling its sponsorship of the Olympics. Notably, none of the Christians declared a holy war or shot up the Creative Director’s offices over it.
This was all entirely predictable, unless you’re so embedded in a grievance minority cult that you have lost all contact with the world ‘out there’.
Facing backlash from 2.4 billion Christians (not to mention other conservative cultures, such as in China, whose broadcast commentators were reportedly stunned into silence during the spectacle) and the prospect of further sponsorship withdrawals, Creative Director of the ceremony Thomas Jolly swiftly denied the Last Supper reference.
“It was not my inspiration,” he said in an interview the next day. “I think it was pretty clear, there is Dionysus who arrives at the table… The idea was rather to make a big pagan festival linked to the gods of Olympus,” explained the queer-identified Jolly.
A pagan festival, that should make the Christians and Muslims feel better.
There was “never an intention to show disrespect to any religious group”, games spokesperson Anne Descamps told reporters.
“On the contrary, I think Thomas Jolly did try to intend to celebrate community tolerance. We believe this ambition was achieved. If people have taken any offence, we of course are really sorry,” said Decamps.
Exactly what one would expect the people responsible for a PR and sponsorship crisis to say in a PR and sponsorship crisis. This is PR spin, folks.
But no one actually believes this story, do they?
Yes, Dionysus arrived on the scene after the tableau was set. But come on.
And if the Last Supper reference was genuinely not intended, then how this scene got past the sensitivity readers without anyone, anyone, saying “hey, you know what, this looks an awful lot like that world famous historically significant religious tableau” is a story for the ages.
But actually, the New York Times wants you to know that “art historians are divided” on which feast was being represented at the ceremony. As though pastiche can only be derived from a single source of inspiration. As though art historians must first reach consensus before Christians can divine whether to be offended or not.
The art historian sophistry prompted educated-sounding people on social media to inform the world that the opening ceremony scene definitely wasn’t inspired by the Last Supper, because can’t you uneducated brutes tell a Dionysian feast when you see one?
The subtext is that anyone who angry-tweeted or pulled sponsorship over the Last Supper imagery is a buffoon who doesn’t know their art history.
I didn’t even angry tweet over this before today but now I’m mad about it, because once again everyone is being told not to believe their lying eyes. ‘Experts’ are being wheeled out to prop up PR messaging. And people who want to appear erudite are furthering the BS by politely correcting their friends on social media.
Perhaps the reason it pisses me off more than others is that I can do it too, but I choose not to. I worked in marketing. I am an English and Cultural Studies major. I fully understand how easy it is to twist a fact, find an expert and apply a reframe to hit the message you want and pull the rug out from under the one you don’t want.
But I refuse to do it because it’s lying. I think the best thing we can do is keep saying what is obvious and put up with the withering looks from our erudite friends who assume we just don’t understand NYT op-eds well enough.
Anyhow, before the great re-write continues on this particular lie, I’m just going to highlight that three days ago, everyone thought this was a Last Supper scene, not just the Christians.
Drag Queens:
Gays:
Leftists:
France TV in a since-deleted post, calling the scene “A LEGENDARY Supper” (again, la Cène is the French name for the Last Supper).
French culture website Sortir à Paris, noting the clever pun in staging the tableau on the Seine – Scène de la Cène à Paris sur la Seine:
Literally every single French media outlet that covered the event (English translated from French)
(Above includes Sud Ouest, Le Soir, L’Equipe, Notre Temps)
So, okay fine. We need art historians and the Creative Director of the show to tell us everyone understood it wrong. In any other setting this would be called an artistic fail.
But in our sick AF culture, everyone had better adjust to the expert queer professional opinion or you’re a dumb bigot.
Biden’s dementia cheap fakes, Covid vaccines saved a bajillion lives, ‘democracy’ wars, Ukraine, Palestine, Kamala the Border Czar, men can get pregnant – the New York Times and friends patiently explain with the utmost sophistry why you ought not believe your lying eyes or read any historical literature unsupervised.
Is this what it looks like when your civilisation is in decline? Asking for a friend.
This article was originally published on Dystopian Down Under, Rebekah Barnettt’s Substack newsletter. You can subscribe here.
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As news of Mr Anderson’s defection to Reform spread throughout Westminster on Monday morning, one senior Tory backbencher captured the mood by saying that “disbelief is the feeling amongst colleagues.”
Disbelief? Are they seriously surprised by this? What on earth did they expect? Can they really be that dim?
The answer to your last question Tof, is yes.
Dim. Arrogant. So used to getting things their way that they can’t ever envisage not getting things their way.
MPs are expected to put their careers above everything else and joining a dissident right-wing party instead of groveling in one’s waste products (a quote from a 1980s computer game called Starflight) is certainly a career-killing move, hence, disbelief.
Reform is “a dissident right-wing party?”
Sadly, it is not. Middle of the road possibly.
Let’s celebrate our pride in being British: our amazing culture, our unbreakable communities, our incredible heritage.
A statement like this, made in German by a German party, would be sufficient to be branded as arch-nazi by everyone commanding a public voice and to start initial investigations for extreme-right-wing-isms by the Federal Office for Protecting the Constitution (inland secret service). Things aren’t yet as bad on the UK but that’s where the journey is supposed to go to (Gove’s undermining of liberal democracy etc).
Sensible people would describe Reform as traditional centre-right party seeking to occupy the spot the Tories are supposed to be occupy. To career blobsters, that’s far more far right than anything should legally allowed to be. After all, the party is planning a thermageddon genocide of all of mankind by keeping to burn oil, coal and gas.
Stalking horse, pressure valve. I think Reform could be okay, but not under Tice, he’s not the right person, wrong on too many issues. He’s pro mRNA, pro “Covid” measures, pro Net Zero, not calling for peace in Russia v Ukraine so possibly a Neocon warmonger.
Similarly, Lee Anderson is wrong on many issues. And, if we’re being honest Farage.
Farage delivered Brexit, but on many issues he’s equally wrong headed.
I can’t say anything about the other topics, but Reform certainly calls for everything-Net-Zero to be scrapped.
Okay, happy to concede that point, if that is the case. But he was awful regards all things “Covid” and was very pro “vax”.
Someone believing the mRNA injections “might” be useful for the elderly and chronically ill, could be forgiven for being swept along by the all pervasive hysteria, but to suggest mandating, vaccine passports and ignoring the concept of “informed consent” or just “refusal for any reason” is unacceptable and unforgivable.
Yes times were tough in the first couple of years (at least), but some of us had the fortitude and insight to see this was all a massive con and betrayal by those in “charge”. We were betrayed by the people we should have been able to trust and rely on, and Tice and his ilk did not stand up and be counted, despite being offered a very powerful opportunity.
Tice is probably controlled opposition – sadly! Sadly because we need someone genuine, principled, committed and on the side of freedom, rights, truth, with integrity and morality.
The way Reform are polling, they have real potential, not in 1st past the post, but if more do what Lee Anderson has done!
Forcing young girls, who just want to dance, to have vaccines almost certain to mean increased still births, miscarriages, disabled children, infertility. Remember the vaccines still on emergency approval only. Revolting, disgusting.
RICHARD TICE, 19 JULY 2020.
Yes, I’ve heard Tice say that on a number of occasions
They do call for Net Zero to be scrapped. But to do that they will have an almighty battle on their hands against the huge Climate Industrial Complex. ——-I am all for this battle but it is going to be like Kursk on speed
Yes, except his excellent policy of “Net Zero Migration”.
Not their ‘net zero’ migration policy they don’t!
And the candidate they put up in the ‘Groomers of Young White Girls ‘R’ Us’ Rochdale by-election of all places, was a former Labour MP done for sending creepy messages to Young Girls.
Reform needs to up its game considerably and relegate Tice to a back seat behind Nigel.
I pretty much agree with you kev. On all of it.
Lukewarm as my support for Reform is (their net zero migration policy ‘one out, one in’ is ludicrous), if they manage to get even a small wrecking ball to knock the Uniparty skittle drones into disarray, that will be a start.
“Can they really be that dim?”
Oh yes indeed they can and are.
I have the feeling that career politicians feel that if they all swarm around the middle ground it will simply be a question of what bunch of wimps to vote for. They all want to sell the basic stuff like bread butter and milk, because they don’t seem to think the public want anything else. —-I can assure the silly Tories that if they think they are better off just being Labour Lite then they will have no identity anymore.
At last! Just what is needed, now come Nigel join in
And maybe even Andrew Brigden?!
Nigel’s doing a sterling job on GB News …. and I expect his priority is doing whatever he can to help get Trump back in the White House.
That’s great news! Now, Andrew Bridgen, you, too.
Bridgen won’t join Reform because Tice is so wrong on everything “Covid” related. Tice is wrong on a lot of things! So is Farage, sadly!
No, it is you who are wrong, apparently because you haven’t taken time to actually read the Reform policies on their website, or looked up any quotes from Richard Tice, like this one:
“Forcing young girls, who just want to dance, to have vaccines almost certain to mean increased still births, miscarriages, disabled children, infertility. Remember the vaccines still on emergency approval only. Revolting, disgusting.”
RICHARD TICE, 19 JULY 2020.
Lee was wasted in Sunak’s party because there was no place for him. He’s a conservative.
Stout fellow!
True, he was like a trumpet with a wah wah stuck in the end, now he can really let rip!
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/irish-voters-i-salute-you/
Laura Perrins rubbing the Irish establishments noses in their gruesome defeat over a revised Constitution.
Sometimes, just sometimes the plebs do the right thing.
Marvellous.
Now let’s have a referendum on immigration and net zero (yer right, more chance of walking on Mars!)
The problem is we had a referendum, and the blob have spent the last 6 years trying to dilute and destroy what the majority voted for.
We even have a second bercow!
Quite a few column inches (to use the old term) on GBN this lunchtime on that. Having been around for a while, the whole affair reminded me of the formation of the SDP in the early 1980s, when Labour broke apart.
Labour may well break apart again as George G is very keen to stand more candidates & could well take 20 or more seats from them.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/anti-semitic-londons-echoes-of-1930s-berlin/
Londonistan.
This is what you get when somebody with no allegiance to this country is allowed to become Mayor.
I don’t know how the establishment sleeps at night – traitors all.
There were no Arabs shouting anything in “1930s Berlin” and the Arabs currently shouting something in London aren’t burning books written by German communists and communism supporters and other beneficiaries or proponents of the Versailles treaty and the Weimar republic/ system it begat. This (the article) is nothing but another clumsy (very clumsy, actually, as the related events aren’t even superficially similar) to repurpose well-established anti-German stereotypes for supporting the present policy of the government of Israel.
Did we know this? I didn’t know this. Smells like appeasement again, it’s getting way too familiar a stench methinks;
”More than £117m of taxpayers’ money will be used to protect mosques, Muslim schools and community centres from hate attacks over the next four years.
Home Secretary James Cleverly said the money, which will be spent on measures including CCTV cameras, alarms and fencing, would give “reassurance and confidence to UK Muslims”. The announcement, which follows a £70m package for Jewish groups, comes in response to concerns that the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza is fuelling division in the UK.
The Government condemned a recent rise in reported anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish hatred and ministers have made it clear they expect the police to fully investigate all hate crimes and work with the Crown Prosecution Service to bring perpetrators to justice.
Mr Cleverly said: “Anti-Muslim hatred has absolutely no place in our society. We will not let events in the Middle East be used as an excuse to justify abuse against British Muslims.
“The Prime Minister has made clear that we stand with Muslims in the UK. That is exactly why we have committed to this funding, giving reassurance and confidence to UK Muslims at a time when it is crucially needed.”
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/government-commits-more-117m-protect-28792057
Not that we need any further confirmation of who the Met police favour and give preferential treatment to. We all know who the perma-victims are. So does this mean we can expect zero ‘incidents’ perpetrated by a certain not insignificant section of society now that we’ve entered the ‘peaceful’ month-long Ramadan festival?
https://twitter.com/blonschki/status/1767134772155822437
Go Go Go ———–Thanks for your great contributions. I am going to have to create a new Twitter account to see all the links you post as my last one seems to have bitten the dust. —-cheers.
Cheers, Varmint.
It’s nice to be nice.
Are the front bench idiots doing anything to protect the rightful people of this country whose forefathers and mothers suffered, shed blood and died in numerous wars over centuries against would-be invaders and dictators to keep this country safe and free?
No, they would rather appease the izlamists by spending our taxes protecting jihadis who would like to murder us, & on idealogues who plot to outnumber us, sabotage our society by using democracy against us and turn the UK into the kind of 3rd world izlamic ****hole they came from.
Vile traitors sit in Westminster.
The Tories then have given up being right of centre and have morphed into just another hand wringing bunch of Liberal Progressive wimps. ——–What we do not want though is for Reform to become the rabble rouser party, we still need to make cohesive and sophisticated arguments. —-I say “we” because I now have no choice but to abandon the former conservatives known as Tories and vote for the only right of centre party now available.
QuoteLee Anderson Defects from Globalist Uniparty 1 to Intelligence Agency Outfit.
There, fixed it for you.
Are Reform becoming the GB News of Politics ? Tice backed the Jabs at one point & now word up is that Anderson did too ? + they don’t seem to back Bridgen !
Whoever vetted this chap, should be ashamed. He is not a benefit to anyone’s party. For the simple reason, he believes the covid
saved millions of lives.
I raised this & got a downtick for my trouble
I mentioned this a couple of days ago. For his position on the jibby’s he is suss.
That’s a belief he probably shares with the overwhelming majority of the population who got jabbed because they were told it was the right thing to do and who don’t want to admit – at least not publically – that all they really did was saddle themselves with an avoidable health risk for pharma industry profits and with the ultimate outcome that the covaxxes ceased to be bestselling product because everybody (almost) got tired of being pricked with needles and thus, restarted living in this germ-ridden world as if the pandemic of Corona madness had never occurred. It’s futile to demand perfection from people.
A competent leader uses the wise man, the brave man, the avaricious man and the stupid man. The wise man wants to distinguish himself, the brave man wants to prove his courage by fighting, the avaricious man seeks his own benefit and the stupid man doesn’t fear death.
[Sun Tsu, The Art of War]
Apparently the Party Grandees are planning to fight back by deploying Lord Dave of Greenshill Lobbying and the Fat Oaf on the campaign trail. If they can get the knives out of each other’s and Sunak’s back first, of course.
Now I agree that for some strange reason, the Fat Oaf does seem to appeal to many working class voters. But the Greenshill grifter ….. words fail me.
Do you mean Bunter ? The Booster blaring 80 Seat majority Chunt !!!
We seem to be gearing up to enforce a PR system onto the Westminster Uni Party, which is desperate to keep FPTP ….. with Reform snapping at the heels of the Not-a-Conservative-Party and Galloway gearing up to inflict some serious damage on Fabian-Labour.
Jolly Dee ….
That’s not really a good idea. PR systems cement the division of people instead of representing their unity and invariably lead to professional particians putting the interest of their party above everything else.
One of the reasons why the first world-war was terminated by a revolution in Germany is that particians of the largest party (the SPD) didn’t think, and very much rightly so, it wouldn’t be in the best interest of their own party if the war ended with a German victory or even just with amiable peace negotiations among the warring powers. This caused millions of people to get killed or be driven from their homes (there’s really only one world-war with 20 years of an uneasy armistice in between) but to this day, the SPD is a major, if not the major political force in whatever remains of German it currently controls.
From the standpoint of the SPD, this was absolutely the right strategy and the sacrifces fell mostly onto others.